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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532572">Tinder Stricken</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams'>ArchaeopteryxDreams</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Animal Transformation, Bargaining, Body Image, Brief Mention of Past Child Abuse, Character Death, Class Issues, Earthquakes, Female Friendship, Gen, Loss of Identity, Magic, Misunderstandings, Noodle Dragons, Original Universe, Phoenixes, Physical Disability, Science Fiction &amp; Fantasy, Terminal Illnesses, crime is a social construct, end of life care, language translation magic, non-human viewpoints, social inequality, the definition of personhood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:35:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>88,968</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25532572</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchaeopteryxDreams/pseuds/ArchaeopteryxDreams</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On Tselaya Mountain, all humans transform into animals as a consequence of age — but for farmwoman Esha, goat horns began growing in when she was just a child. Now in her forties, unmarried and alone, Esha scrambles to pay for her own retirement before she is more goat than person.</p><p>But when Esha stumbles into the wrong patch of forest, a wild phoenix steals her heirloom khukuri knife. Unwilling to lose her treasure before she can sell it, Esha forges a deal with Atarangi, a back-alley diplomat who speaks to animals. Together, the two women climb mountain plateaus to reach the wild phoenix’s territory. With enough tact and translation magic, the bird might be convinced to give Esha’s retirement fund back.</p><p>But the question remains: why did the phoenix steal an heirloom in the first place? What debt could a wild, free creature possibly need to pay?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Tinder Stricken was first posted in 2015, as an ebook under a different pen name. It draws inspiration from real Earth locations -- Nepal, Tibet, China and Polynesia -- and their indigenous peoples and cultures. I made an effort to learn about these cultures and adapt them respectfully into a magical world. However, I'm still a North American white person with no direct experience with these ways of life. If any aspect of this fantasy story is disrespectful to real people, I'd appreciate being informed.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By dawn's feeble light and one smoldering candle, Esha stared into the polished tin mirror, full of dread like any other morning. The goat had stolen a little more of her body through the night.</p><p>Esha was already well acquainted with her goat traits, particularly the damned horns. Age was changing her into a markhor goat and giving her an ever-larger profile, with two straight spirals rooted in the top of her head. Behind those grew the goat's ears. They were newer abominations than the horns, but still no surprise, drooping off the sides of her head and brushing itchy at the upper rounds of her human ears. And in patches all over her scalp, crowding out the glossy, night-dark human hair that Esha actually liked, were wiry patches of pelt. Another fraction of Esha's hairline had fallen to the beast — right above her eyebrow, five more goat hairs as pale as poison. Esha of the Fields didn't have much longer.</p><p>But that fact was as plain as garden dirt. Esha had never been promised a long life. Only the luckiest people got to see their faces turn distinguished and their human hair go silver. The heavens gave humans precious little time in their ideal bodies and capable minds, before they slid back into more bestial form. Esha had reached her forty-eighth year of life and she was still mostly presentable — after physicians telling her she would be a bleating beast by her thirty-fifth. To some degree, Esha was doing well.</p><p>There was good news in her reflection, once she decided to look for it. Her eyes were still untouched by the goat. She still had crow's feet tethering her eyes into her face, and irises as dark as good soil, and the round pupils of a human. Esha scrutinized the slopes of her weather-beaten face and the narrow rise of her upper lip and found herself still there.</p><p>Esha arranged her headwraps with a newer set of motions — starting the strips in circles around the bulging bases of her goat horns, but then winding the fabric across the stiff spades of the goat's ears and down behind her human ears. Her bones were hurting lately and her fingernails thickened, but at least she could show her face without shame. The heavens were to be thanked for that. She rose to light a cooking fire, and get on with her meagre human life.</p><p>Esha had time to dump millet into boiling water, but not enough time to eat it. Tax collectors frowned on tardiness and the last thing Esha needed was town guards wresting her door off its hinges. She tucked her nameplate into her underthings, the white-glinting metal plate with <em>Esha Of The Fields</em> etched there as proof of the woman who carried it. Then she hurried her layers on: charcoal-coloured pants, blue tunic, and a gold-dyed sari wound around them both. Her plain clay sigil, mark of a farmer, clipped the sari closed; her belt settled around her waist with holstered tools weighing on her right side; and her selfrope wound diagonal around her body, just in case the mountain's gods wished her to climb today. Her carrot-yellow woolen cowl came last, draped loose to obscure her horns' coiling shape. Everyone knew they existed— but it was still vital to try.</p><p>She checked everything in the mirror, and took one last glimpse of her human eyes to hold like a prayer to her heart. Then she shuffled outside, and waited.</p><p>The tax collector was new to Yam Plateau: he was a tall man with a fine, unblemished forehead. He stood speaking to the next-house neighbour. Exchanging white documents. Taking her sack of payment. Then he was striding up to Esha's door, his polished plumwood caste sigil glinting prominent on his silk shirt collar.</p><p>Esha pressed her hands together and bowed, offering namaste first as low-castes should. The tax collector was gracious enough to offer namaste in return: Esha couldn't remember the last accountant who had respected her so. But she snatched that thought immediately back when his eyes hesitated on her tall-tented cowl, and his smile faltered.</p><p>It was a typical collection day, otherwise. This collector was too slender-nosed to be Grewian but he spoke the tongue fluently, so they needed no betel nut to translate with. The tax collector could have provided the translation anyway: he had a rustling overlaying his voice — rustling like dense perilla bushes and some sparse-leafed tree, maybe a ginkgo. That meant he had eaten a handsome breakfast. Perilla and tree-nuts would cost at least forty-three rupees and that wasn't even including the cost of rice.</p><p>Esha paid the tax collector her month's property due — one hundred rupees, earned from weeks of dust-covered work. She handed that sack over with a sour pang in her heart.</p><p>The tax collector went on to assess her house, with his green-filigreed voice and his stack of wax-embossed property records.</p><p>“Six armlengths by eight,” he muttered.</p><p>He checked the bamboo walls with a measuring twine — as though Esha would bother enlarging her shack by a stolen hand-width.</p><p>“Well caulked. Good.”</p><p>Esha always filled spaces between the bamboo with a fresh lump of pine pitch, the moment she discovered them. Not because the cold bothered her but because on windy nights, the smallest draught whistled like a demon's scream: Esha couldn't afford to lose sleep to that.</p><p>“Garden plot one armlength square.“ He measured that plot, too, and eyed each onion sprout, and lifted the leaves of Esha's sesame plant to find nothing contraband underneath.</p><p>“Acceptable cord supporting the flags,” he muttered, “Farming caste, divorcee and childless flags are all present. These statuses have not changed?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>His quill scraping on bleached paper was his only comment. In between Esha's more sociable flags was her divorcee flag, her double-pennant of shame that had pulled itself loose from where Esha had accidentally, deliberately tucked it into the bamboo shingles.</p><p>“Some of these flags are fraying at the corners,” the tax collector said. “You would be advised to replace them.”</p><p>“Kind thanks,” Esha said. Paying an indecency fine would be less expensive than replacing the flags with new fabric and dye; she kept that observation to herself.</p><p>And that was all the tax collector had to say. He scribbled and stamped his notations; he gave Esha a slip of cotton paper stamped with an accountant's seal, to pardon her from a tardiness reprimand. And then he hurried away toward other farmers' houses, to take some field-fellow's money.</p><p>It was finished, as favourably as Esha could have hoped for. She even had pardon now and didn't need to rush to work: Janjuman Farm had plenty more hands where hers came from.</p><p>She took her cooked millet off the fire to cool, and she checked her garden for aphids and earwigs. For a decadent moment, she stood watching the sky, eating pinches of warm millet mixed with cold lentils and pickle.</p><p>At this serene hour, with the sun barely risen over Tselaya Mountain's foothills, specks of lungta glittered pink and gold in the wind-rolled sky. Esha watched individual motes twirling and tumbling — some drifting ethereal through bamboo roofs and walls, others lodging in brick foundations or else the Tseleyan earth. One lungta mote swooped past Esha's feet, to melt into her few handspans of garden earth. If the lungta fell generous this year, her soil would be magic-rich and her plants enriched, too. Esha never turned down free breath-of-life, or the skills it gave.</p><p>Standing there chewing in the morning calm, thinking about vegetables and money, Esha was suddenly swallowed by reality. Her khukuri was failing, the blade wrinkling a little more each time she hacked bamboo sticks or pork bones. No one could live without a good knife: her khukuri had to be replaced it if it should fail. But an indecency fine was on the way, as well. But she just paid away her worldly worth a few moments ago.</p><p>There was always the savings chest — but Esha couldn't touch that, she could <em>never</em> touch that. Not until she was more goat than woman.</p><p>She gulped her last bites of millet. She needed to get to the fields.</p><p>Janjuman's clerk accepted the excuse seal with a tepid frown; he had a stack of identical seals by his elbow. Esha walked alone through the creaking gates of Janjuman Farms and hurried, off-tempo on her limping leg, toward the other workers.</p><p>Bent over their tilled rows, hands working fervent, the fieldwomen were spread sparse: only a few hundred of them were free from the tax reaper at this early hour. Esha walked the rows — between neighbours' brightly coloured saris — until she met the bent backside that belonged to Gita Of The Fields.</p><p>“Hail, sister. You saved me some yams?”</p><p>Gita grinned past her own knees and waved Esha to her side. “The entire field. They're your endowment.”</p><p>“Yaah, strike me down now.” Gradually, achingly, Esha folded herself over to touch fingertips to the dirt. “I didn't see you at collection.”</p><p>“I paid a little extra last month, so my due is tomorrow.”</p><p>She paused. Their spades bit, scraping, into the soil.</p><p>“You made your due?” Gita asked.</p><p>“I did. Didn't even need to rob my savings chest, praise for that.” She unearthed a shrivelled, dead husk that was once a yam plant, and yanked it loose, and replaced it with a seed. “Will you have enough, sister?”</p><p>“I will, but I won't have a fortune afterward.”</p><p>“That's my trouble, too. Got flag fines coming.”</p><p>Gita sighed, her tall-wrapped head shaking dismayed.</p><p>“And my khukuri won't last much longer ... Maybe the gods will slip some coin into my purse.”</p><p>“I'll think of something,” Gita said.</p><p>“Please — you don't have to.”</p><p>“I do,” she bit out. “We're the only ones who'll look after us.”</p><p>Esha dug down to another yam, swallowing with a throat turned dry despite the millet's moistening lungta. Gita was right. Gita was always right about these things.</p><p>Janjuman's cook put too much pork in the evening meal. In the warming winds of spring, plants were more valuable in the ground than in a low-caste's bowl. Wedged shoulder to shoulder with her field sisters, Esha turned a rib bone in its barely-spiced sauce and her stomach quavered: her changing innards were beginning to hate slick fat and gelatinous flesh, while craving fresh leaves that Esha couldn't afford.</p><p>“Thank the heavens for this meal,” one sister said, unseen beyond many others, “but, yaah, look at the meat!”</p><p>Grumbling rose from other workers.</p><p>“It's clear what this means,” came a sister's jesting voice. “Yaks are too expensive. They want more plough beasts.”</p><p>“Nonsense,” said another. “Everything will go to seed before we're any use!”</p><p>“Cheaper to just hitch us to the yokes now.”</p><p>“And plug their ears against our complaining!”</p><p>Laughter huffed all around. Every fieldwoman Esha knew was managing enough grain and pickles for mere subsistence, for living out their heaven-assigned portion of human life. But it was easy to wish for the robust health that greener meals would bring.</p><p>“The prank is on them,” came neighbour Menku's voice. “My traits will make me a terrible plough beast. Round-eared and skin-tailed, if you see what I mean!”</p><p>Menku's trait animal was a rat, or maybe a mouse. It was a vulgar joke, but those in farming caste were close to the earth in more ways than one: laughter burst from the woman at the thought of a rat buried under mounded yoke straps, with a baffled farm overseer commanding it to get to work. At Esha's right elbow, Gita coughed through her mouthful of food and laughter, sudden enough for Esha to laugh more and harder.</p><p>As the joke dissipated, everyone returned to their meals, stirring wedges of chapatti bread deep in hopes of finding millet. In the corner of Esha's vision, one of the new farming girls leaned nearer to Menku.</p><p>“Since you've given us your confidence,” she said, “I have a favour to ask. Have you any suggestions for emerging ears? Mine get itchier every day.”</p><p>“Ah,” Menku said, smiling around the bone she chewed, “I'm well versed with that. My eldest son has ear edges emerging and he's always complaining.”</p><p>She hesitated. She glanced at Esha — a snatched look that rippled through the other women, their eyes landing on Esha and skating abashedly away. Then it was over and they listened to Menku's story again, listening close as Menku lowered her voice.</p><p>Esha carried on putting pork morsels into her mouth and forcing them down. She couldn't have said where this idea came from, that she was too frail of heart to think about other women's plentiful families.</p><p>Other conversations muttered back to life; clay clicked as fieldwomen gathered each other's clean-licked bowls. Esha sat there, searingly aware of her stained self — until Gita nudged her arm and spoke, near enough for Esha to feel damp breath against her exposed human ear.</p><p>“Try not to think about it. I've got a plan.”</p><p>“For what?” Esha asked low.</p><p>“Work,” Gita said simply. “Bring an extra sack tomorrow.”</p><p>And then she hurried food into her mouth, and blurted a joke to another harvest woman like she was as innocent as a new day. Esha turned her face back to her own meal, no longer seeing the pork and millet she put into her mouth. She needed to support herself: she was low-caste, and a failure at many things, but she was still a human being. That truth was easier to swallow than the pork.</p><p>They gave their bowls to the dish-scourer — a lanky Hendi man, who spoke not one word of Grewan but was always quick to sign namaste to his fieldworker superiors. Then they returned to work. As the sun rolled downward and the fieldwomen's shadows stretched, Esha's bones were a bright-lit arch of effort. Still, she reached the end of her row.</p><p>Gita was going to get both of them arrested someday. The Empire punished cunning behaviour and even Janjuman's field sisters couldn't know about Gita's ideas. But Esha and Gita were alike: unmarried, and childless, and fallen through the lattices of honourable custom. Esha needed coins in her pocket and more than that, coins in her savings chest, because the goat loomed over her human self and she was forty-eight, only forty-eight. She was in no position to refuse a plan.</p><p>Knowing that Gita needed an accomplice at least made one decision easier. If she was going to do any service to her best friend's plan, she would surely need to walk. She couldn't let her goat-plagued body get in the way.</p><p>The Janjuman clerk checked her nameplate despite knowing perfectly well who she was, and then Esha received her day's packet of rupees to hold tight.</p><p>She was dusty and sweat-damp, but her blackflag trader wouldn't mind. Esha set out for Jhamsik District, passing droves of other farmers headed for their homes. A few walked the same direction as Esha, toward market. Hopefully they needed millet or pine pitch, not contraband herbs; Esha was in no mood to fake innocence to her caste-fellows.</p><p>The central road led past Yam Plateau's other farms, the footprint-speckled dirt expanses that Esha's memory coloured vivid with healthy leaves. Then came a patch of free-use forest — bamboo and pine trees cut to stumps, with replacements already racing skyward. Sunset painted the road orange, illuminating every cartwheel groove and hoofprint. Houses sprang up again — higher-caste ones with more tin and brick than bamboo, crowded together under the blaze-coloured evening sky. Above all of it, the skybound lungta was gold now, like warm stars too joyful to stay still.</p><p>Housing lots grew larger near the plaza. Fine-dressed merchants and craftsmen passed between houses of lacquered bamboo and holy-scripted bricks. Flags fluttered messages on every roof edge: green prayers for health; yellow requests for jute fibre and goat milk; red marriage flags twirling like the very young women who sought husbands. Most of the other fieldworkers joined the nameplate-checking line, where guards permitted access to the market. A few had vanished, and it was time for Esha to do the same.</p><p>Esha turned toward the mountainside, into the single great shadow cast down from Maize Plateau. She wound her arms together against the chill and walked a long-remembered pattern of turns between homes. With side-cast eyes, she checked often to make sure she wasn't being followed: the red-uniformed guards paid her no mind. Even if they decided to interrogate her, she would say that she needed cloth dyed for a new, proper set of houseflags. That was a reasonable enough excuse.</p><p>Her preferred blackflag trader was Ren the dyemaker. He lived in a mid-caste neighbourhood — able to work with moderately precious herbs, yet only suffer guard inspections twice each month. He was a foreigner from distant Zhongmin State, but he had stayed rooted on Tselaya long enough to look familiar to Esha's eyes.</p><p>And despite his rank, Ren's home was exactly as shabby as the last time Esha had seen it. A hole still showed in the bamboo shingle roof, crying out for repair. Gwara demons still piled beside the front door, featureless mounds of hair slurping at the street dirt. Damned things ate perfectly good dropped rupees and then hung around advertising the fact. Esha shooed them with a slow-swung kick and they rolled away, scattering into the alleys with a rustle of dry hair.</p><p>Before she knocked, Esha checked the houseflags. Someone in guard caste wouldn't know to look for it, but Ren's leftmost white flag still had a black resin smudge on its edge. Still marked an ignoble, under-table trader — marked by Ren himself. Esha doubted this man would ever change, but it was prudent to check before she spoke dishonourably.</p><p>He welcomed her inside. In the stinking light of a tallow candle, Ren looked rougher-hewn than the last time Esha had seen him: thinner in the arms, strained in the face, his headwrap sitting low enough to touch his eyebrows. But he freely returned Esha's namaste and welcomed her inside with a jabbering of Zhong, hurrying to shave a betel nut against his straight-bladed knife. That was a comforting truth, along with rain, taxes, and the fleeting nature of humanity. Betel nut could always begin a conversation.</p><p>“<em>Good evening</em>,” Ren finally bade her after a moment's chewing. His voice came out with the rattling echo of betel growing in a windy valley; his teeth were dark-stained from many such greetings. “<em>What would you like this time, Esha?</em>”</p><p><em>This time,</em> as though Esha came every day. She was no such addict. But she held back her tart thoughts and asked for painkiller. For her bones.</p><p>“<em>Bones?</em>” He hissed, and turned toward his supply cabinet while slipping another shaving of betel between his front teeth. “<em>Not much a small-time dealer like me can do about that. I've got a little tsupira that's yours if you have the coin, but for more of it, you'll need to ask my associate.</em>”</p><p>“That Manyori woman?”</p><p>“<em>That is her, yes.</em>”</p><p>Esha had heard of the new Manyori family living on Yam Plateau. It was rare enough to see ocean-farers so far up Tselaya's peak, but rarer still that one of them had been granted diplomat caste. The diplomat's sister, however, was less honourable: she dealt gladtar right under the diplomat's nose. In Esha's life-seasoned opinion, knocking on that household's door would be a better way to get demerits than medicine.</p><p>She threw a hand. “Yaah, I don't want to seek out anyone else — and especially not some stranger. The most potent thing you have will do fine.”</p><p>Ren shook his head, a wagging of headwrap ties over his hunched shoulders. But he produced a folded slip of bamboo paper with neat-trimmed stems inside; Esha gave in return five rupees from her day's earnings, wooden coins she barely got to touch before they were gone.</p><p>“<em>This is all I have,</em>” Ren said. He slid the rupees apart, counting them again for good measure. “<em>I hope heaven smiles on you.</em>”</p><p>“Kind thanks to you. Stay honourable.”</p><p>“<em>I surely won't!</em>”</p><p>That stale joke gave Esha a smile, same as always. Walking back through the mountain's shade, beginning to shiver in the night's chill, she had to remind herself that honour was something to want.</p><p>One rupee remained in her pocket. It went immediately into Esha's savings chest — one more little coin that couldn't pay for discreet walls and a kind-tempered nurse. Virtuous hard work wasn't going to pay Esha's bills — but maybe Gita's plan could.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That morning, over millet, pickles and buttered tea, Esha stared at her painkiller contraband in its slip of paper. Eventually she took a quarter of the herb into her mouth, one musk-fragrant twig, and chewed thoroughly. The full painkilling effect would take time and digestion, but she already felt the lungta energies releasing with each bite, the creeping breath-of-life tingling in her spit and soaking into her head. The pain in her ankles began to subside.</p><p>At least, Esha convinced herself, she could be strong hands and feet to aid Gita's keen mind.</p><p>“So,” Esha asked, bent over a new day's yam row, “What are my extra sacks for?”</p><p>“A phoenix,” Gita said. Her black eyes shone, lacquered over with impish ideas. “I saw it in the fallows. The two of us can surely outwit one bird. We'll share the bounty.”</p><p>Esha tightened her mouth. “If we don't share demerit points on our records. Or a jail cell. I'll be in a jail cell with you one day, Gita, I'm sure of it.”</p><p>Gita spat a laugh, waving her hand. “Believe me, the edge guards never check our fallow fields more than twice a day. They always follow our east rail a little before sunset. We'll have time.”</p><p>That wasn't the kind of detail Esha noticed: she kept her eyes on her hands because careless work killed perfectly good plants.</p><p>“If you're sure,” she ventured.</p><p>“Entirely.”</p><p>“We'll claim to be defending the fields?”</p><p>“Mm-hmm.”</p><p>“And then we'll say that we failed to catch the bird?” A claim made after the bird was safely in a blackflag's hands, and the reward safely split between their two pockets.</p><p>Gita turned back to planting. “If anyone thinks we've lied, how will they prove it?”</p><p>“Sky as my witness,” Esha murmured, “This is madness. All I want is a nurse to wash my hair.”</p><p>“Spit on that — I'll be washing your hair. Until I can't find a human hair left on you.”</p><p>Much as she felt guilty for it, Esha was glad. Gita was the only one who had laid eyes on Esha's goat horns — and Esha was largely sure that Gita hadn't shown her deer pelt to anyone else. As the elder of the two, Esha would succumb first and be released to the mountain slopes, like they planned.</p><p>Some farm women weren't so fortunate. They worked slower each day, bodies warping, their rags and wraps overgrowing them like blight but unable to hide the inevitable. Eventually, the moment came when they weren't a person any longer. Just a confused animal making a scene.</p><p>“Well?” Gita asked. “We're doing this?”</p><p>In her sweat-clammy clothing — humble, faded things with fur hidden underneath —Esha hesitated. They were just trapping a phoenix, a nuisance animal by anyone's standard. How, she asked her sullied self, was this plan any worse than buying unlicensed medicines? It wasn't, really.</p><p>“When?” she decided.</p><p>Gita showed her betel-stained teeth, delighted. “Later. So there won't be enough light to bother reporting back to the field.”</p><p>It was amazing how little a person could be grateful for. But Esha was still kindled at the thought of a bounty. They wouldn't even need to report it to Janjuman's overseers — overseers who would report the phoenix catch honourably, to a registered trapper, and take a fat cut of the payout.</p><p>“I'll do whatever you wish,“ Esha told Gita. “Just don't ask me to chase the pest on these legs.” Regardless of that thought, she was smiling.</p><p>The evening meal was still mostly pork, with watery gravy, a spoonful of millet and even some string-thin shreds of cabbage. It was enough green food to prevent a civil war.</p><p>While Esha ate her humble meal, she listened to the other women Of The Fields, their voices familiar as the wind.</p><p>“When I say a fatty salve helps the itch,” Menku said today, “I truly mean a fatty one. Mostly lard.”</p><p>“That's what I used,” the new girl insisted. “I prayed it would work, but it didn't!”</p><p>Menku hummed. “I've heard tell that horns are worse.”</p><p>That was true; Esha held her peace and watched Menku turn to a stoop-backed elder field worker — the only one with taller headwraps than Esha.</p><p>But she didn't get an answer before the conversations all died. The plough yaks' panicked grunting rose loud outside, and then the nowhere-and-everywhere humming of an earthquake was upon them.</p><p>Bowls fell to the floor, wobbling in circles. Everyone was wide-eyed and surging toward the walls, pressing as far from the ceiling's midpoint as possible. Dozens of arms clutched field-sisters close, shielding youngest and oldest as the tremors worsened; Esha had Gita's hand laced tight in hers and she didn't remember when that happened.</p><p>This earthquake subsided quickly. Silence and stillness returned — with no one thrown down, nothing ruined except a few spilled meals. In the dusty air, Janjuman's overseers flowed in the door to count heads while field workers crept back to their food.</p><p>Gita tugged Esha's hand. “Auspicious, hmm?”</p><p>Esha had to untangle their hands to swat her.</p><p>Gita volunteered them for perimeter check. Earthquakes did little damage to bare fields and fallows, but volunteering to scout for damage still showed a prudence that overseers liked well enough. Esha and Gita walked as brisk as Esha could manage, around the south-eastern side of Janjuman's estate to the edge of the grass-buried fallow lands — a long way to uselessly walk, but necessary to act out their lie. Then they returned to the overseers' office.</p><p>To one stone-faced overseer, Gita reported that that they saw a phoenix — in the fallow south-east, moving like it was striking its pieces of iron and pyrite. The two of them wished permission to chase that phoenix for the preservation of Janjuman.</p><p>The overseer brought her before the clerk. Under two sets of scrutiny, Gita repeated herself. A phoenix on Janjuman's land. Fire-starting behaviour. They wished to chase it.</p><p>The clerk eyed them like new-bought yaks, while inking and wax-sealing the permission form. He said, in accented Grewan, that the two of them had absence verification for this day only: if they brought the phoenix in, they would need to make report on their own time but they would be honoured in the records. And they might be subject to a monetary reward.</p><p>He didn't specify how much of a reward. Surely two or three rupees that could be earned easier by cutting bamboo.</p><p>“I will advise you,” the clerk added, “that based on measurement of this evening's earthquake, the earthreaders do not predict aftershocks until tomorrow at the earliest. However, there have been reports of a windsickle demon attacking an individual near the worldedge. Your safety is your own responsibility.”</p><p>Esha and Gita agreed, and ink-stroked their signatures onto the forms.</p><p>“Truthfully,” Gita said while they walked edgeward, “I've never heard of anyone making good on a pest animal capture. It's more trouble than it's worth.”</p><p>“I saw some clause about replacing personal property that gets damaged in Janjuman's service,” Esha said. “Maybe I'll try claiming that.”</p><p>“You'd need a diplomat to convince them, I'm sure.”</p><p>“If my khukuri blade finally meets the Makers today, I'll blame the phoenix. Who will defend some bird?”</p><p>“Yaah, I don't know. Just make sure there's phoenix blood on the blade, if you're really going to try it.”</p><p>“I thought we were just capturing it in a sack? Keh, it doesn't matter.” Knowing Esha's luck, her khukuri would wait to snap while cutting her morning yams.</p><p>Gita said nothing out loud, just kept up her smirking convoy of clever thoughts while she watched ahead. These fallows would be ready for replanting next year: bamboo stood taller than Esha did, its young leaves rattling in the wind. Carmine beetles crawled knee-high pine saplings, searching for magic-laden resin that wasn’t flowing yet. Movement snagged Esha's eye — but it was only a lone gwara, rolling through the grass in a mindless, seeking pattern.</p><p>“What about those aftershocks,” Gita said with a flat voice and a monkey's wry smile. “The clerk is good to warn us about those. Knowledgeable as he is about the mountain's soil.”</p><p>It <em>was</em> a little absurd. Carrying a permission form in her pocket, Esha was free in this moment; the tiers of human birthright were a smoky, distant thing. “And what <em>does</em> a clerk know about dealing with the earth?” she obliged Gita.</p><p>“Plenty! He must struggle mightily to keep his inkwell upright during an earthquake.”</p><p>“You think so?”</p><p>“Well, that's more lifting than a clerk usually does.” She peered sidelong at Esha. “Isn't it?”</p><p>Esha was the only one of the farming women who had seen the gloried heights of the mountain, and the lavish homes that looked more like temples, and the lungta showering down like petals from heavens' blooms. The taste of her smile changed. Only Gita was allowed to ask about these bitter memories.</p><p>“Gita Of The Fields,” Esha said firm, “mind your tongue and honour your betters. Clerks transport more tonnes of useless paper forms than you could ever know.”</p><p>“Yaah,” Gita cried, “I thought you were serious!”</p><p>“They're stronger than yaks, these clerks.”</p><p>“Esha!” One of Gita's flailing hands found Esha's, and she squeezed it brief and fond.</p><p>“Alright, I'll speak truth now,” Esha laughed. “Clerks are in the same caste as earthreaders, so they're informed of an earthquake an hour before anyone else. But that's all.”</p><p>“There aren't any earthreaders on Yam Plateau. Why would a scholar come this far down the mountain?”</p><p>Esha waved the question away. “They wouldn't: they'd send a messenger. Fah. Tell me something fresher, sister — where did you see the phoenix? You <em>did</em> actually see one, didn't you?”</p><p>“It was here, right here!”</p><p>They walked from bamboo thicket to gumgrass field, the knee-high stalks sticking to Esha and Gita's homespun clothes. Something delicate grew among the resinous undergrowth — one herb sprout with pale, bent leaves — and Esha took care not to step on something so potentially precious.</p><p>“But the bird didn't seem to like anything it found. I saw it moving edgeward, so I think we'll find it there.” Gita slowed her pace, placing her sandals careful and silent as they rounded a thicket of bamboo. Her hand slipped into her satchel for a throwing stone. “This is where I saw the bird before. Scratching for seeds, I think.”</p><p>The winds blew stronger with every step, and the flag-strung fence crept into view — bamboo rails with white-and-orange striped flags too bold to ignore. Beyond there, the lee side of Tselaya Mountain fell away and there was only empty sky. A bird would surely feel safe here, so close to the sky, perched on the edge of a human-owned plateau. Esha combed her gaze over the surroundings, too — searching for red imperial guards as much as red feathers.</p><p>She followed Gita around a head-high stand of bamboo — and suddenly, Gita stopped, throwing an arm out to bar Esha’s way.</p><p>“Over there,” she whispered. She reached into her satchel and wrapped a fist around a second stone. “Scratching at the dirt.”</p><p>“You think you can strike it in one try?” Gita was the better shot of the two of them: she could have been an archer if she had been born to a better caste.</p><p>“Yes, just go around and flush it out. Toward me.”</p><p>After a heartbeat of hesitation, Esha bent, to grip some gumgrass and yank it up roots and all. “Don’t kill it,” she told Gita. Some fools thought phoenixes were more valuable alive.</p><p>“I won’t.”</p><p>Esha took a final glimpse around and saw no guards, no witnesses at all. Grass clump held tight, she crept away from her friend around the bamboo stalks.</p><p>The field slid into view, more dusty leaves and sun-bleached air — then a sliver of orange feathers, bright as fire. The phoenix faced away from Esha, bent and focused on the soil. Its long neck lifted.</p><p>Esha held still, avoiding its gaze.</p><p>The phoenix paused. Its feather crests lifted, then fell back into three sleek points. It shuffled its feet, and its wingtips. Then, warily, it bent again toward the earth.</p><p>That would be the last mistake this bird made. Esha lunged and threw, and her root clod sailed wide but the phoenix startled all the same, hurrying onto its wings. It flew past Gita and there was a hard whip of movement as a rock struck the bird’s wing. It screeched and faltered, its knotted stringfeathers grazing the grass tops — but it still flew, limping airborne toward the worldedge fence.</p><p>“No!” Gita cried. She ran and was gone past the bamboo.</p><p>Esha hurried the opposite way around the bamboo stand and caught a glimpse of Gita running so her blue sari edges flew, toward the phoenix that whisked over the worldedge fence like a torn-free flag.</p><p>“Ah, gods’ spit,” Gita sighed, her voice like dust on the wind. She slowed, rubbing at the edge of her headwrap. She had always sweated a lot under her head coverings; Esha felt a prickling at her own hairline in this fallen moment.</p><p>“Come on, sister,” Esha called. “It can't be helped.” She walked the chasmic distance between them, gumgrass crackling under her sandals. “Did you loose any feathers from it?” They might at least get a few rupees for good wing quills, or for durable stringfeathers with the phoenix's fire-striking metals tied in.</p><p>“Don't believe so. Damnit! I struck it true and it still flew away.” She reached the fence and laid both hands on the bamboo rail’s curve. “Like the cursed thing had— Esha! <em>Esha</em>, look! It’s still here!”</p><p>Esha hurried to the fence, and with the wind moaning around her she looked down — where Gita pointed, at the vanishing, concave rock face. Down there was the phoenix, clinging to the craggy rock and staring up with eyes like hot embers. One of its wings fanned rough, like it could no longer close.</p><p>“We can still get it!”</p><p>Esha eyed her friend; the doubts surged back. “You think so?”</p><p>“If it could fly, it wouldn’t be simply sitting there — isn’t that true?”</p><p>“You didn't bring a net, did you?”</p><p>“I haven't owned a net in years. We've got our ropes — what if we snare it? At that angle, though ...” Her face as determined as ever, Gita unwound her selfrope from the loops strung diagonal around her body.</p><p>“Here.” With hope heavy in her gut, Esha bent for a small stone. “Weight the string. If anyone can catch this thing, it's you.”</p><p>They spent long moments bent over that fence, squinting into the wind. Yam Plateau was the second-largest plateau on all the tiers of Tselaya, built wide by the gods and expanded even wider by metalworkers; the plateau's underside receded so deeply toward the mountain's core that the phoenix was sheltered underneath. Gita threw and threw her makeshift snare, grumbling oaths to herself. Holding fistfuls of Gita's sari and bearing some of her friend's weight, Esha watched the clouds and craned sometimes to see the fallows behind them, once again fearing guards' colours.</p><p>“Is it even still there?” she asked in a breathless grunt.</p><p>“Still clinging.”</p><p>“Amazing that it's got a grip at all.”</p><p>“They've got good claws,” Gita said. “Harder than steel. Part of why the whole bird gets a good price.” She wound her throwing arm back, and paused, and threw with limp resignation. “Let go, sister — thank you for holding on.”</p><p>Esha didn't hear her own replying voice; it was drowned out by the liberation of letting go and stretching her hands, her arms, her ever-troublesome ankles.</p><p>“I could throw until Martyrs' Day and not get the rope around it,” Gita grumbled.</p><p>“We tried, sister.”</p><p>Gita flicked tongue over her lower lip, considering. “Let’s not give up. We’ve done enough giving up. What if I just climb down and grab it?”</p><p>“What?!”</p><p>“We're good mountain children: we brought ropes.” She looked to her own hand resting on the top fence rail. “And the Empire provides us with somewhere to tie them. I'll just climb down there. We've come this far, Esha.”</p><p>This wasn't a leisurely trip down-mountain on climbing spires: there was an enormity of open air below them, hundreds of meters to the edge of Betel Plateau far below and far more open space below that. But the phoenix was only a few arm-lengths away. Well within a selfrope's reach. In the bitterest crevice of her heart, Esha agreed: she didn’t want to give up anymore. She didn't want to carry a burden of disappointment back to the clerk's office, to file a truthful report of their failure.</p><p>“Fine.” Esha unwound selfrope from her own body. “Fine. Use two ropes, though.”</p><p>Their shadows stretched in the golden evening. Gita tied a stout knot around her waist; Esha looped and tied Gita's rope around the fence's two rails. The bamboo poles looked unblemished and the iron nails untouched by rust — but to ease her mind, Esha tied her own selfrope on the next pair of rails over.</p><p>“I’ll tie the phoenix onto your rope,” Gita said. “Pull it up and get it inside a sack, then give me back your rope.”</p><p>“Will that work? It can’t burn though jute rope, can it?”</p><p>“Not unless we sit here like lard lumps, letting it strike sparks.”</p><p>Clever plans were sounding less clever by the moment. Esha pressed her mouth, and pulled her knot tighter. “You know best, sister. Be careful.”</p><p>“Always.” With her selfrope tied between the fence post and her own body, Gita wound Esha’s rope around her arm. She set her pouch aside, and toed off her sandals. For a moment, she met Esha's eyes like a real sister, as honest as their shared sweat.</p><p>And then with bare feet spread for grip, Gita stepped onto the fence and over it, off the edge of civilization. The ropes pulled taut. Esha could only watch as Gita dangled, creeping downward in the open air. The phoenix stared hot steel at her, huffing through an open beak, its warning keen rising louder than the wind. Gita shifted, leaning, and testing her own balance. Her earth-brown hand stretched toward the phoenix’s fiery feathers and its snapping beak.</p><p>Then Esha's feet slid from under her, the fence rail catching her and stunning her breathless as the earth roared. She gasped and struggled upright, grabbing the tied loops of Gita's ropes. Another earthquake was upon them — with no warning this time, not so much as a humming in the soles of Esha's feet, this couldn't <em>be</em>.</p><p>“Gita! <em>Gita!</em> Hold on!”</p><p>She grunted — but she held fast, her limbs wound into a knot around the rope and her gaze still fixed on the damned bird.</p><p>Esha looked down past them — only for an instant, all the way down at the bucking void of green below, the wilds of the lower plateau. No one could survive a fall like that. She tore her eyes away and she was cold inside, aware of her fragile life hammering in her chest, until she looked back to Gita because Gita was the only one who mattered.</p><p>But Gita was throwing herself into her reach, swinging on the ropes and managing to snatch the phoenix by its forked tail. The bird screeched, its wings thrown open, beating at the air and at Gita’s head so she bent, flinching.</p><p>Rope creaked against fence bamboo — and under Esha's feet, rock cracked like a cannon shot. The fence sagged, a feeling like molten metal in Esha's veins but the tremors were fading, settling away into the deep earth while the fence yanked farther over the worldedge. Gita's selfrope had slipped, settling in the fold of two bent fence rails that crackled under the strain: Esha gripped the knots and pulled but her pain-stabbed joints couldn't lift Gita's weight more than a fingerwidth.</p><p>“Climb back up,” Esha choked out. “Hurry!”</p><p>The phoenix screeched still; movement hummed along the taut rope.</p><p>“Take the phoenix,” Gita shouted. “Here, it's on your selfrope— Agh! Wait, wait!”</p><p>Esha leaned forward on the sagging fence, an awful idea that made her guts lurch with terror: down there dangling, Gita was still fumbling with tangled loops and beating wings.</p><p>“Forget the bird! Just come back up!” Esha gripped Gita's selfrope again but it was a useless precaution: she couldn't bear her sister's weight if the fence failed.</p><p>“No,” Gita spat, a high cry like desperate wind, “<em>no!</em> I’m not throwing this prize away. You're not going to be a beast woman stared at in the street. I just need to—!”</p><p>“Gita! Gods’ balls, it’s <em>just a bird!</em>”</p><p>The top rail cracked, jerking to a stop against the bottom rail. Time hung and the bottom rail moved as well — yielding, bowing toward the abyss.</p><p>Gita hesitated. She was bleached with fear, gripping both lifeline and the stupid, screaming phoenix. “Very well. Just—“ She reached reaching one-handed for Esha's dangling rope.</p><p>Esha looked again to the bowing fence rail, to its splintering bamboo and now its iron nails baring like teeth. “This part is failing — get onto my rope!”</p><p>And Gita did, gripping Esha's selfrope between her feet, letting slack into her own rope. Still weathering the phoenix's one-winged blows, Gita crept upward. She had to be exhausted, and more fearful than anyone but Esha could know.</p><p>Another fibrous snap — this time a cavernous sound, ringing out of a hollow-cored pole. The top rail of the second fence section was failing too, and Esha's tied rope jerked against the bottom rail, the last one remaining.</p><p>Gita looked up at her, a farmer’s worn face with eyes as wide as a child’s. She hadn’t tightened her headwrap: her fur-dense hairline showed.</p><p>Esha's hands hovered by the snapped hollowheart rail, wanting to seize her selfrope and her sister's weight but she was rotted through with terror. These rails definitely couldn't bear weight but why would they be made into fences at all?</p><p>Gita was climbing, grasping rope and pulling nearer.</p><p>Another snap from the last rail, another hollowheart pole shattering. Gita fell away, white-eyed, attached to two slack ropes — until she jerked against the fence shambles and then those gave, too, ripping from the shredded earth. Esha was screaming, kicking back against her own balance point and the cliff beyond it as Gita fell open-mouthed and silent, the phoenix thrashing in her fist.</p><p> </p><p>Then there was only silence and wind.</p><p> </p><p>Esha stayed crumpled on the worldedge, gripping nothing at all with her useless fists, her voice fading to wet grief in her throat. She got up and crept to the torn worldedge — dreading the sight of sari blue slumped over Betel's worldedge rails. But Gita wasn't there. Just emptiness, like Esha had come here alone.</p><p>She didn't want to imagine Gita bouncing, cartwheeling, falling even farther. She could still see the phoenix’s plumage, burned into her mind as bright as sun-blindness. For the want of that one vermin bird, Gita was dead. All they wanted was a little money. All they wanted was to retire at peace, that wasn’t so much to want. But the earthreaders gave wrong advisories and the Empire-made fence was made of garbage bamboo — and it didn't matter, because they were field women, just field women. Gita Of The Fields was dead and that left Esha even more alone.</p><p>She knelt there wet-faced, for how long she couldn’t have said. She wiped her cheeks dry and felt every wrinkle. With numb hands, Esha touched the empty sensation around her torso where her selfrope ought to be.</p><p>And she found her gaze resting on Gita’s shoes and her satchel, laid on the gumgrass like a rainstorm’s leavings. Maybe there ought to be a funeral, Esha thought. A pittance of a ceremony. Gita Of The Fields had no family who acknowledged her blood ties: she had been disavowed just like Esha. It would only take moments to fetch some field sisters and honour Gita's life, while showing them the tragedy brought by poor official work.</p><p>Or Esha could simply acknowledge Gita’s life right this moment, alone. Quietly. Gita had returned to the sky now — likely not to the gardens of heaven, knowing her irreverence and her schemes, but it felt good to believe otherwise. Gita had died a human: some tribute needed to be made.</p><p>Turning Gita’s shoes over, finding them worn but still sturdy, Esha wondered what to throw over the cliffside. What defined a human being, other than their very body, however long that lasted?</p><p>Gita had hooves and hair encroaching on her body, just like Esha did. If Esha died and left a friend behind watching, she wouldn’t want her effects thrown away. Funerals were about honour, about singing hymns for the sky to hear. What was honour to disavowed field worker, to a grinning woman who had never cared for honour in her entire life?</p><p>Nobles would look down on this choice. Nobles hadn’t done Esha any favours in recent years. If Esha Of The Fields had been the one to fall, she wouldn’t want perfectly valuable things to be thrown after her. Let material goods serve the living. Let some field sister actually know comfort.</p><p>Esha opened her own satchel and stuffed Gita’s shoes inside. They would fit well enough when she wore her current sandals through— if her feet stayed human long enough for that.</p><p>Horror roiled in her stomach again as she opened Gita’s satchel to take the sundry goods inside. One extra throwing stone; a knuckle-sized piece of pine pitch; a paper-wrapped stick of jerky; one lone rupee coin, probably for bribing soldiers. And in a small inner pocket, Esha found a metal piece that flashed white in the setting sun: Gita’s nameplate. Her simple name, the same familiar <em>Of The Fields</em> strokes that she had signed on the clerk's dry paper.</p><p>Gita never had believed in wearing her nameplate in her clothing like most of the others did, like Esha did. <em>I don’t want Of The Fields stamped into my hide if I trip and fall</em>, she said.</p><p>Esha had always thought it foolish. Gita had always <em>been</em> a little foolish, for all her cleverness. But here Esha sat with Gita Of The Fields's imperial identification, the only true piece of Gita that remained. What a paradox, that if Gita had kept her nameplate on a pendant cord to keep it safe, it would have been lost. Instead, Esha held it, real and cold.</p><p>If one fieldwoman used another’s nameplate for a few trifling things, who would ever know?</p><p>With a stone weight in her gut, Esha slipped Gita’s nameplate into her own satchel. Gita had tied a leather thong onto it, to string her official property token together with her name. This made Esha the owner of two meagre farming shacks, for all anyone knew or cared.</p><p>Then she turned to the worldedge and threw Gita’s empty pouch, so it soared away on the wind. And that was all. No one would know where Gita went or how to find her, and that cunning fact could help Esha now. If only their roles really could be reversed.</p><p>Evening approached. Esha ought to return to the farm and make her report. Her field pay would be scrawnier than usual as it was — the same worry as always, Esha thought with a tired body and valuable burden in her pouch.</p><p>She stood — and that was when she saw guards approaching, three armoured figures glinting with gilt, polearms silhouetted on their backs. Panic filled Esha, cold.</p><p>“Hail, subject,” a hard voice called.</p><p>“Graciously met,” Esha replied. She signed namaste to them with arms that didn't feel like her own.</p><p>She held the gesture, frozen, while the soldiers approached — two men and a woman, strong and frowning examples of middle caste. Under the crimson mesh of their helms, their foreheads showed, smooth and respectable. They returned namaste, then slashed gaze over Esha and the broken fence.</p><p>“Are you hurt, citizen?” the lead soldier asked.</p><p>“No, ah— No, I'm still whole. The earthquake ...”</p><p>“It was unexpected, but be at ease. Early reports say that no one was killed on Yam Plateau.”</p><p>That was so wrong that Esha wanted to spit; she sobbed instead, one hot knife of a cry bursting out of her.</p><p>“It was a frightening event, to be sure,” the woman soldier said in a voice like cotton-padded steel. She came a step closer, a solid blur through the tears Esha hurried to wipe away. “What are you doing here alone, citizen?”</p><p>“I— I—“ She needed to lie, and Gita's last few moments kept overtaking her mind like an avalanche but Gita herself had given her a story to use. “The fields. I saw a phoenix, a-and I came to try catching it. To safeguard our fields.” With a scrambling in her satchel, Esha produced her permission form for the woman soldier to take and examine close.</p><p>“You shouldn’t be near the worldedge alone,” the lead soldier said. “Where is your overseer?”</p><p>“I'm not alone.” Esha gulped, and wiped her tears again; she took one last second to pray she had enough courage for this lie. “My field sister, she's searching, too. We just— We split ways to cover more ground and I haven't seen her this hour. I just thought of her now — I don't know where she is!”</p><p>“As I said, there haven't been any deaths reported. Your colleague is fine, wherever she is.”</p><p>“I'm sure,” Esha choked. “P-Please forgive my foolishness. I praise the gods you’re here.”</p><p>Her hurts were cauterized now, numb from the lying; she chanced a look up at the lead soldier and found him nodding to the quiet soldier, who was now documenting this encounter with logbook and ink stick.</p><p>“This fence is ruined,” called the woman soldier, from near the awful cliffside. “One post missing, four rails broken, six posts in need of reinforcement.”</p><p>“Tch. There won't be money for that, with the road in such bad shape.”</p><p>“Try to log it as Betel Plateau's problem?”</p><p>The leader snorted. “Good fortune to you. No, it'll just take some time.”</p><p>More and more tithes the Empire asked for, higher taxes every year on the ramshackle homes they gave to farming caste — but they couldn’t even keep their safety promises to the people of the mountain. Couldn’t even bother to use decent bamboo on the worldedges, when one or two good poles might have saved a woman's life this day. Here Esha stood, puffy-eyed and fearing for her future in front of soldiers who might even prompt her for a bribe of rupees she couldn't afford. She turned her gaze to her sandalled feet. She was just a low-caste. She trembled inside, full of catching flames.</p><p>“We’ll make a report of this broken fence,” the leader went on. “The Empire will provide.”</p><p>No, they wouldn’t. Esha nodded.</p><p>“Your identification, citizen.”</p><p>Calm now, her heart like chile pickles in a tight-lidded jar, Esha reached into her satchel and produced Gita’s nameplate. The leader took it in a gloved hand and scrutinized it, between glances at Esha’s field-worn face.</p><p>“Gita Of The Fields,” he agreed. “Unless you'd rather not be named in the report.”</p><p>“You may use my name. Heaven will judge.”</p><p>He nodded, face souring. “At ease, subject. Keep your wits about you from now on.” The other two soldiers took their positions behind him in standard wedge formation. They marched away, continuing along their token route.</p><p>It simple to speak a dirty lie and send the Emperor’s dogs on their way. That simple to steal Gita's name and avoid fines, or demerits, or a damp-walled jail cell or whatever Esha's punishment for her circumstances might have been. For want of some coin and some better-grade bamboo, Esha stood here with forty-eight years of darkness finally rising, finally swallowing her heart.</p><p>She wasn't worried about honour anymore. And now, with Gita's nameplate cold in her hand, she knew what to do about her retirement.</p><p>Esha walked her sore-kneed self back the way she came. Dirt-caked and conspicuous, she stood under the farm clerk's stare.</p><p>They saw a phoenix, Esha heard stumbling out of her own mouth. They split up to chase it but the bird escaped. Then the second earthquake caught Esha off-guard, and now Esha couldn't find her coworker.</p><p>“How long has it been since you saw her?”</p><p>Esha gauged time past her racing heart. Two hours, she said. Maybe three.</p><p>With a grim mouth, the clerk shook his head. “Do you believe that she would desert her station?”</p><p>Esha had never understood why a fieldwoman would do that. Farming life wasn't much. It was sweat and dust, and eating millet more often than good rice. But compared to untouchable caste — a life spent underfoot, scrubbing everyone else's leavings — field caste was a gift, if a shoddy one.</p><p>Esha shook her head. She didn't know, she said. Maybe Gita <em>had</em> deserted. She hadn't said anything about it ...</p><p>The lie caked inside Esha, gritty against her conscience. Gita was no deserter: she had only ever talked about helping Esha. And if a deserter seal branded her records, what little honourable record she had would be gone like steam in the wind.</p><p>It didn't matter: Gita was dead, said the burning memory Esha couldn't look away from. But they were kin in their hearts as well as in their sealed contracts. This wasn't right.</p><p>“Maybe something happened to Gita,” Esha tried. “We were in fallow field, near the worldedge ... M-Maybe she fell somewhere. Or a demon came, or a bandit, during the quake while the guards were occupied? Could Janjuman advise the town guards? To look for her?”</p><p>Esha stole a glance at the clerk's face, at the calm, even paleness of a minor noble. Someone who never saw sunlight if he didn't care to. He leaned forward, tassels shifting on his headwrap, and pushed the silver sharing dish full of betel nut slivers toward Esha. His silent command was to eat, then listen. The clerk was honouring her with confidence: her heart sank like water vanishing into dry earth.</p><p>“<em>With due respect,”</em> the clerk said in rustling tones, <em>“she is as good as gone.”</em></p><p>This was the Kshatri tongue: Esha couldn't understand it without aid but she recognized the sharp-cut sounds underneath the lungta.</p><p>“<em>She must have followed some temptation,”</em> the clerk went on, <em>“something she found more likeable than her duty. That is what deserters usually do.” </em></p><p>He was discarding Gita like turned meat, mere moments after she was reported gone. What if she came back? But she wouldn't come back. She was taken from this world — and the clerk could never know that. Hot pain seized Esha's throat; she held her face steady.</p><p>“I-I have never known Gita Of The Fields to desert anything. But you are likely right, sir.”</p><p>The clerk's stare was impassive, as a higher caste's stare should be. <em>“Does she have arrangements for her estate?”</em></p><p>“She does.” Esha and Gita were as good as blood sisters: Gita's land allowance was bequeathed to Esha in her official records. Esha nearly had a right to carry the property token in her satchel. “But if she does return ...?”</p><p>The clerk rearranged some wax-dappled sheets. <em>“She will be noted as missing, and her work quota will be offered to all the field workers of Janjuman. If she has not returned three months from this day, she will be classified as dead. If activity under her name is found at that time, appropriate measures will be taken.”</em></p><p>That meant demerit points — which were strikes against caste rank.</p><p>The clerk's gaze pressed into Esha like a knifepoint. <em>“I presume a person like you knows what that means?”</em></p><p>“I do,” she murmured.</p><p>Shifting more paperwork, the clerk turned away. <em>“Gita Of The Fields has three months, in case she should change her mind. If she is not dead and you should find her, she must be urged to return. She might only receive one demerit if her work load can be made up. But I doubt that. Heaven be with you, Esha Of The Fields.”</em></p><p>This was an ice-edged kindness, Esha knew as she gestured namaste and turned to leave. Iciness was the only grace higher castes knew how to give — when giving downward, at least. But Gita's good name had a whole season of grace. If Esha could stomach the dishonour, she could make use of that grace.</p><p>She returned to the field's tilled rows, taking her place among the gold-lit formations of stooped women. Menku turned a glance to her. No one else did; these were the last moments of the farming day, loaded down with work to be completed.</p><p>Just like any other day, like her life hadn't quaked underneath her, Esha bent and drove her hands into the earth. But her mind was roaming farther than ever before.</p><p>While Esha laid in her bed, sore and hoping for sleep, she saw only Gita's face. Heard Gita crying out as she was swallowed by the sky. Breathed the dust clouds raised by beating wings, and knew revelations as clear as rain telling her that this, all of this, could have been avoided. Esha and Gita could have tried harder to toss rope around the phoenix from above. They could have tied Gita's selfrope to a different spot on the fence, and swung at the phoenix from a sturdier point. And as a smallest precaution, they should have waited longer after an earthquake — gods' teeth, they had both been foolish, rushing into precarious work when the earth had barely finished heaving. Why had they been so stupid, Esha wondered in the suffocating dark? For want of a little money? Why were all the bloodlines of Tselaya Mountain so fixated on the coins that ought to serve life, instead of the reverse?</p><p>With her pulse drumming and her heart full of bile, Esha heaved her sore body out of bed. She folded her legs to sit at her working mat, and she wound thread and bamboo leaves together and she made a doll. A ragged one, with dry bamboo leaf skirts and looking out at the world with a blank expanse of face. A little coal ink gave it eyes, nose and mouth. It looked like a person now.</p><p>Esha stared at the creation in her hand, calm now but filled to her brim with all the sights she had ever seen. The dark blots of the doll's face looked like Gita, the wet ink shining just like Gita's eyes shone with plans. Esha sifted through her scrap box and found leather and cloth shavings. She tucked two slips of leather into the doll's leaf head — like the horns Gita had confessed to have, the deer horns rising from the crown of her head like pale shoots. Then Esha cut a strip of fabric and wound it to cover those horns, and tied it in the front like Gita had. She tied on a thread of selfrope and the doll looked right now. A tiny, sad imitation of a person who had lived and breathed, but it looked right.</p><p>Esha put the doll among others, among all the painted leaf faces she had made in her lonely moments, and with that she had no strength left. She snuffed her pine candle and fell into bed like a dropped sack of grain. She had no more thoughts — just memories dull enough to forget about.</p><p>In her dreams, the namesmith returned. She hadn't dreamed of him in decades but he was silhouetted by smelting fire again, a monstrous figure taking Esha's nameplate from her powerless hands so he could worsen its caste markings yet again.</p><p>This time, she wasn't scared. She was too canny to be scared; she could salvage these last months of her life if she held on to Gita's abandoned nameplate — and used it like the opportunity it was.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For days afterward, Esha was bound too tightly by her heart to act. She cut spring's emerging bamboo shoots for her solitary breakfasts. She ate pork with the other fieldwomen. She rose with the sun and sank her hands into the earth, and stayed late in the fields three extra hours portioned off from Gita's working days, hours that stood out blatant in Esha's sense of passing time.</p><p>“Where <em>is</em> Gita?” Menku finally asked one morning. She patted the plough yak on its shaggy head, while peering curious past it and its water cart burden.</p><p>Esha could only adjust the water cart's trajectory for so long before she answered. “I don't know,” she said. “I saw her when we were chasing a phoenix in the fallow fields. I lost sight of her.”</p><p>“And she didn't return? That's not her usual colour at all, is it?”</p><p>Esha mutely shook her head.</p><p>Menku hummed and tugged the yak's yoke. The water cart rolled with a groaning of iron axles, leaving black-soaked channels in the dirt at Esha's feet.</p><p>“I thought she went visiting someone,” Menku said, “or maybe cutting. But if she didn't tell you...” She turned to the fieldwomen spreading manure with long-handled shovels. “Sisters, have you heard word of Gita? Esha hasn't seen her.”</p><p>Their faces broadened with surprise, and they called the news to the next pair of field women. The news spread through the field as finches would spread it, called out urgent; Esha kept her face turned to the dirt.</p><p>Menku's voice came again, gentle. “You looked for her ...?”</p><p>“I was out in the fallows for hours.” That wasn't strictly untrue.</p><p>“And she didn't leave you any sign at all?”</p><p>“Something has surely happened to her,” Esha murmured.</p><p>“Oh, Esha! You two are sky and air!”</p><p>Menku raised her voice again and spread the news, so it echoed away in other women's voices. It stung with each repetition but in Esha's bruised heart, she wanted them to know. They deserved to know the barest fact of Gita's disappearance.</p><p>“You were in the fallow east?” one fieldfellow asked. “She might have met a windsickle.”</p><p>“Or a water serpent,” added another.</p><p>“What? Don't be stupid, serpents don't dig out that far.”</p><p>“I was cutting bamboo there last year and cut into a hollowheart stalk! That means serpents!” In a prouder voice, the woman added, “I ran as soon as I saw the hollow inside of that bamboo. It felt like claws were going to snatch me from behind in any moment, but I made it home safely. Didn't even go back for my saw.”</p><p>“Fine waste of a saw — there aren't any serpents that near to a worldedge!”</p><p>They kept arguing it. More discussions swelled in the fields' distance — talk of bandit cutthroats, and demons, and all the reasons a farmwoman had to simply run away.</p><p>Esha listened, silent and guilty behind the water cart. And that day, not one fieldfellow accused her of a crime. They thought Esha Of The Fields was too honourable for that.</p><p>Under the weight of such thoughts, all her ideas and experience compressed into a sure plan. She would lay traps while out cutting bamboo, and sell her game to a blackflag for savings money. Trapping wild animals was a skill forbidden to all except the leatherworker caste — but Esha hadn't always been a farmer. She would be careful, working by moonlight — and if she got caught, she had Gita's nameplate armouring her true identity. One Grewian fieldwoman was just like another, to every guard she had ever met.</p><p>Esha visited Janjuman's fallows again. She found a damp patch of soil — from underground water tables, shifted after the earthquake no doubt — and harvested the yankvines snaking through the ground where any ordinary plants' roots would be. With hefty coils of it in her satchel, Esha returned to her shack home and by the metallic light of the moon, unfurled the piece of pig leather she had been saving.</p><p>Its tannic smell brought an avalanche of memories. Kettles full of precious spruce bark; dinners of turnip greens and grilled pheasant on rice; the leathersmith's gruff voice. Esha had lacked practical skill, back then. Noble children were taught to hold inked quills, not knives.</p><p>Now, Esha poised her khukuri over the leather, holding it by both its handle and the curve of the blade. She set the point to the leather, and after a steadying breath, she began the long, even cut to make a snare line.</p><p>She didn't complete that cut before the khukuri gave sideways. Esha swore. She glared at the wrinkles bubbled throughout the blade, and threw the now-scrap metal against the wall.</p><p>It took a moment to gird herself for it, but Esha used her digging spade on her carefully tamped floor dirt. She unearthed the lid of her savings chest and opened it — not to add a rupee or two, but to take away from her own future. She had no choice: her savings contained the only other khukuri she owned.</p><p>The Kanakisipt khukuri was no tool for a farmwoman. It was weighted perfectly, the treewood handle fitting Esha's hand like a blessing, the angled blade flashing silvery. The notch at the blade's base was shaped like a cow's hoof; Kanakisipts were worthy of using a cow's sacred image. On the end of the handle, the resin jewel caught light on its many faces. In this light, Esha could hardly see the orchid bloom immortalized inside but she remembered its shape plenty well.</p><p>The age-dried memories were simple enough to push aside. Gripping this fine blade, Esha poised again over the leather and resumed her plan.</p><p>With five traps made and the night half over, Esha left home on silent feet. Flags hung calm in the windless dark. Stray dogs bayed, far distant. The other farmers' homes were lightless and silent, their occupants asleep like Esha would have given her right eye to be.</p><p>She headed toward town, quicker than her joints agreed with. She skirted the well plaza, with its chain pump a looming shadow and its four guards sitting as still as carved jade. Esha slipped between shacks in square-edged movement — keeping to shadows — winding westward through the houses. The wind began to smell cleaner. More bamboo forest appeared.</p><p>This part of the free-use forest was called the Farback. It was dangerous, the whispered rumours said. Many of the bamboo stalks looked ordinary but were actually hollow, like they had been scraped inside with a knife even while they grew. Those bamboo stalks were filled with foul air and bad luck. One of the Janjuman's fieldsisters disappeared eight or nine years ago — and her husband said she cut the wrong stalk of bamboo, and was swallowed up by a water serpent. The rumour spread so fervently that the Yam Plateau arbiters had to restore order: they examined the bamboo and the torn ground and the woman's bloodied khukuri, and they said no human could have committed the crime.</p><p>Esha had no plans to cut fire fuel — not this night, anyway. If it was so dangerous here, she might be fortunate enough to avoid seeing another human soul. Her heartbeat rattled hard inside her as she walked among the clattering bamboo, every shadow seeming to dart in the edges of her vision. She only wanted to set some traps.</p><p>She only walked until she found young pine trees, well away from oak and cloveberry and any other tree heavenly enough for the ranger caste to keep watch over. As she walked, she found a rhythm. Bend a tree; attach a snare; pin down the snare with stakes lodged precariously enough for an animal to bump loose; place a pinch of cooked yam in the slack loop; hurry onward. The last trap — the largest loop made of thickest leather, maybe enough to snare a deer or a wild pig — went to a ragged-barked pine tree far from Esha's home. Then she was done. She had only to wait.</p><p>Esha limped quick through the shadows, back home. Her vision smeared with exhaustion but her heart drummed so loud that it took her an eternity of blanket-wrapped moments to fall asleep. She was using the Kanakisipt heirloom, the one she was meant to hide, or ignore, or else quietly sell. She was farming not just dusty yam fields, but the entire body of knowledge she had acquired in her slide down Tselaya Mountain's caste ranks. As of this night, Esha was trying, really trying to snatch something better for herself — and surely, Gita would have given her a delighted grin.</p><p>She caught nothing after her first night. But over the next two weeks of bone-sapping late nights, Esha tried different morsels of her own dinner as bait, and adjusted the tension on her snare lines, and soon began finding pikas and hares and pheasants dangling, waiting for her. Bundled into cloth sacks, they might have been jute fibre or bamboo leaves for all anyone in the market street could tell. But she didn't waste her allotted market visits on this.</p><p>She thought Ren would introduce her to another blackflag, but he was perfectly glad to buy the game from her. Wild game tasted better than any fence-bound animal, he said, and went on to talk about stuffing these with rice and mustard greens. He gave Esha rupees, and sometimes a little painkiller herb for her trouble.</p><p>With the extra walking she was asking of her degrading legs, Esha was tempted, always, to give back all the rupees and ask Ren for more herb. But that would render her extra work pointless. Each day, she was adding rupees to her savings chest. Her plan was working: Esha only needed to endure it.</p><p>One night, she found one of her traps sprung, with an official warning bound in the snare loop.</p><p><em>The owner of this unauthorized trap,</em> the waxed text said, <em>must report to a ranger or face a charge of 3 demerits.</em></p><p>Panic filled Esha — before she remembered she had more demerit points than that, and so did Gita. She wouldn't be demoted again, not if she made her money before she got caught three or four times. She wouldn't even need to beg a ranger for lenience if her plan kept working.</p><p>Esha put the summons note back into the snare loop and left it hanging there. On her limp-blighted legs, she walked away. This wasn't her trap anymore — not when she had more traps left to check, more opportunities awaiting her use.</p><p>Much as Esha would have liked more sleep, she tried to appreciate the night. The sky glittered with lungta and with stars, too. Wind whispered in the bamboo, surely the kind of voice that a priest might be able to hear heaven's words in. And among those tall stalks, in their swaying shadows, there was a shape that demanded Esha's attention.</p><p>Esha's breath caught. She lifted a bristly juniper branch, and there in unfettered moonlight was a kudzu plant with a spire of a flower, just like the ones in Esha's memory.</p><p>Ceremony guests. Gleaming silks and wooden beads. Honeyed kudzu blossoms held in immaculately clean fingers, slipped into mouths before more lungta-accompanied discussion.</p><p>None of that mattered now. Surely, the dyemaker would give her good money for this nobles' plant. Esha used the heirloom khukuri to slice the kudzu off at ground level, and she set a handful of dead leaves over the remaining stump. The whole plant went into her satchel, bent and tucked so it fit and stayed hidden. She kept on.</p><p>Esha's second trap was empty. Her third trap was, too. Maybe last night's game was warded off by whichever ranger came stomping through this forest, claiming things for the Empire — or maybe foodbeasts were just more clever than Esha gave them credit for. She kept walking, dragging up memory of last night's path and the snares laid along it. Hopefully her trap near the lake would catch something the dyemaker liked to eat.</p><p>The pine forest at the edge of the Farback was the most burdensome part of Esha's route; no paths broke the blanket of crackling orange needles, and the trees were mostly the same size, like stamped copies of one another. There was little here worth harvesting but Esha held out hope that creatures might come here to eat the gumgrass, or to just walk unbothered by human presence.</p><p>Useless blessing that would be, though, if she couldn't find her own trap. She stopped, and pinched between her eyes so the world darkened and whirled around her. Concentration. Just a little more concentration, a little more work and she could go sleep. She might have been getting thirsty, Esha supposed; it had been hours since her millet dinner and she hadn't had the sense to drink a cup of water before walking off into the night. The kudzu leaves might make a fair substitute, green and succulent as they were. Their bulk at Esha's side was suddenly a temptation, a fixed point in Esha's hazy thoughts. She couldn't eat it, she only needed to keep going. Because the night wasn't getting any longer and she couldn't find the bent treetop that was hers—</p><p>Something circled her ankle. It yanked Esha’s feet from under her and the world jerked wrongways, her throat yelping inside her as the braided yankvine resisted and she bobbed to a stop, dangling from one leg.</p><p><em>Here</em> was her trap. Here was her gods-damned trap and she had stepped right into it. Upside down by her own doing, Esha stared at the forest floor a few inches beyond her stretching fingers.</p><p>Esha grumbled bitter oaths. What a stupid thing to do. At least no one was here to see it.</p><p>The snare dug into her leg, impossible to wriggle loose from — but animals wouldn't think to cut themselves free. Esha grabbed at her clothing-layered body until she found her satchel strap, and followed that to the pouch compartment. Her fingers pushed aside fabric, and more fabric, and the innumerable cool leaves of the kudzu — then pain bit her fingers. She recoiled with a hiss and saw the knife tipping, glinting, falling, and grabbed only cold air as metal thudded against the forest floor.</p><p>More damnation. Esha craned to look at the ground below, a rotating mass of dark texture around the bright shard that was the Kanakisipt khukuri. If she stretched her arm toward it, she would be precious finger-widths short; she tried anyway and only managed to swat more air.</p><p>So she dangled there for a moment, with the fact of it soaking in. This was Esha's just portion. This was her reward for being stupid and not minding her feet, and she swore a little more before she gathered the satchel into her arms and took stock of what she had within reach. Three jute sacks; five rupees to buy her way out of trouble; the kudzu plant, and in the bottom corner, a cork-dry sliver of betel nut that Esha had forgotten about. No water. No sharp tools other than the khukuri she had lost to clumsiness.</p><p>The snare was only a slip knot, though. Animals lacked the presence of mind to loosen it — and Esha was no animal, not yet. She bent upward, reaching for the leather around her ankle. Her stomach muscles blazed and her blood swelled inside her, and her fingers wouldn't reach. She tried again, throwing her weight upward, slinging her hands toward the goal. Esha could touch the snare, even grip its knot between her thumb and forefinger, but that was far different from supporting her weight.</p><p>She straightened, letting out a grunt as her limbs fell like stone weights. The movement set her spinning again, the world a whirling palette. She dangled there until the spinning stopped. Esha wasn’t sure if a person could die simply from hanging upside down: it didn’t seem deadly in the basic fact of it, but her head was throbbing in time with her pulse. She would definitely die of thirst in a day or two.</p><p>She breathed deep — an unfamiliar motion, inverted this way — and resolved to wait. Yam Plateau was home to thousands of people who walked patrols, or cut bamboo, or worshipped the placid corners of the world. Someone would happen by. Even if it was someone come to fine Esha, or report her, or jail her for everything she'd done, she would take that over dying here, alone.</p><p>Sunrise came, with patches of shadow receding all around and bird chatter rising in the trees. Esha tried to swallow the gluey itch in her dry mouth, and tried to ignore the numbness in her trap-bound leg. She straightened a few times more, as much as her weary torso would allow; that eased the pressure inside her head for welcome moments.</p><p>People would be stirring from their beds now. And what if someone did happen by, sang the hope in Esha's chest? She would gladly pay some soldier's bribe. Even if someone came who didn't speak Grewian, Esha's obvious helplessness and fear would be enough to explain.</p><p>What if they weren't, though? The hopesong changed key — and now Esha acted out tragedies behind her eyes, where her saviour vanished back into the bushes because they spoke Sherbese or Malkesh or something rarer than that, so that Esha's Grewian pleadings didn't form sense.</p><p>She was thinking nonsense; she knew that while panic welled in her chest and tears crept warm tracks along the outside of her aching head. And crying was not only useless, it was a waste of what precious little water she had left in her.</p><p>Focus, Esha growled at herself. She plucked a leaf from her kudzu plant — wilted now — and chewed. There had to be another way to escape this fate.</p><p>Through the ragged pattern of her breathing, a cadence formed in her memory.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>If we need to make a plea</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The memory echoed twice more before Esha recognized it: this was a rhyme from her childhood. From the time fogged over with powder snow, when she was a child learning the broadest customs of Kanakisipt family diplomacy. She remembered sitting on a stool made of snow leopard fur, petting it with restless fingers while watching the tutor's approving face. And she remembered letting new-learned melody out of her throat.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>If we need to make a plea</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Speak with grace and mindfulness</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With heaven's gifts we pave the way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Each path a mesh of tasteful words</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Better spoken than the rest</em>
</p><p> </p><p>How it hurt to recall those words. Esha hadn't liked the dry, endless lessons but she had liked songs, and sang them with a full heart. She had potential, the tutor had said. She had Kanakisipt talent, as ripe as Accord Plateau's summer plums.</p><p>Dangling, farm-bruised Esha wondered whether that tutor had spoken truth to her. Whether he was flattering his superiors' child, or whether Esha Kanakisipt had heavenly talent and simply a lack of worthy flesh to put it in. It was a meaningless distinction, she decided. Neither yes nor no would light a fire she could warm herself over.</p><p>But hanging there waiting, hoping, Esha kept hearing the rhyme in her head. She gradually, stumblingly recalled all the verses detailing the eighteen races of Tselaya Mountain, their many languages and customs and oddities. Diplomats could forge compromises with any of Tselaya's people; they considered that a point of pride.</p><p>Esha tightened her grip on her pouch and the kudzu inside. She already had a little lungta gathered in her mouth, from the one leaf she had eaten. If she saw someone in the bushes, she surely could call to them.</p><p>Dawn's light became morning. Esha turned in the wind, spinning long and slow. She strained again toward her feet, toward sweet relief but her strength was gone. Childhood verses bound her memory tight and one verse in particular was gaining strength:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>With lungta in our mouths and minds</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We move ideas, share what's known</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then even beasts can hear our words</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But glory spills upon them</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Like the rain upon a stone</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Extending lungta to an animal was called animism, they told her. It was disgraceful. No honourable person could condone wasting heaven's herbs to speak with an unthinking beast.</p><p>Could she talk to a dog, the child Esha had asked? There was a court dog she liked, a silky thoroughbred that smiled open-mouthed when it saw her.</p><p>No, the tutor snapped. She could not talk to a dog.</p><p>That wasn't what Esha had meant; she kept her mouth locked shut for the rest of the lesson.</p><p>It was a matter of honour, like everything nobles did. Of course, nobles thought that because they didn't need to bother themselves with the details of animal husbandry. Esha felt shock the first time she saw a diplomat walking Yam Plateau's streets with a phoenix perched on his shoulder like a mantled demon. She had wondered how that man could live with himself, sullied as he was. But that spring, he talked a wild phoenix out of Janjuman's yam fields and then, to top himself, he figured out why one of the plough yaks was limping. Esha couldn't grudge anyone as useful as that.</p><p>Animists could speak to animals. They could persuade a meddlesome phoenix to leave and never return. Listening to the bird cries all around, Esha formed a new hope: maybe she could make her plea heard even if no people could hear it.</p><p>Carefully, gripping the fabric tight against more clumsiness, she opened her satchel. She chewed and swallowed a scant half of the kudzu's leaves and strained her murky vision toward the shapes flitting in the trees — chirping birds, maybe wagtails.</p><p>Esha had performed animism before. She remembered little about it since she was shambling drunk at the time, on rice beer and grief equally — so speaking to a beast couldn't be <em>difficult</em>. It was simply wrong.</p><p>Esha threw more of her shame into the wind, and strained to bend herself upright, and called out with a rustling of undergrowth lungta in her voice.</p><p>“Hail? Hail, birds.”</p><p>The chirping stopped. Shining little eyes turned to her.</p><p>“Hey, ah. Hello.” There was a stilted way animists needed to speak for animals to understand: Esha suddenly couldn't remember it. “I am a friend. Help me?”</p><p>The wagtails' chittering resumed. They weren't intelligent enough to use speaking lungta themselves — but as Esha pushed her own energy toward her ears and outward, the cries began forming sense.</p><p>“<em>Help?”</em></p><p>“<em>Friend?”</em></p><p>“<em>No! Largebig!”</em></p><p>“<em>Assist friend?”</em></p><p>“<em>No! Enemy.”</em></p><p>“<em>Enemy trick?”</em></p><p>“<em>Trick?! Danger!”</em></p><p>They took wing, all shouting, <em>danger, danger!</em> Flapping faded into the distance.</p><p>“Ugh,” Esha growled, “no!” Not that she had expected much of birds, the brazen little seed thieves. She dangled because she had to, but her senses were strained toward the trees now.</p><p>She waited — for another hour, as near as she could tell. Something small and brown came crackling through the needles but it fled when Esha called out to it. Prey creatures couldn't overcome their base natures. She needed something more cunning, something crafty enough to solve problems for its next meal — a monkey, or a bush pig, or a magpie. Maybe a wild cat would even listen to her, if it didn’t decide instead that Esha was a trussed piece of prey.</p><p>Her bladder ached and her muscles all hummed; her headache was a blunted sword against her temple, pushing hard enough to pierce. Esha couldn't wait for a person any longer. There were animals around that she hadn't noticed but none of them were noticing her back.</p><p>A few more kudzu leaves went into Esha's mouth, laboriously swallowed upward. Then with all the air in her stifled chest, with all the life-movement she could shove into her words, she called out to the wilds.</p><p>“Hey! Hail! I need help. I'll— I'll give you food if you help me!”</p><p>The sky's silence answered her. Wind and clouds, and not one living thing.</p><p>“Help? I'll feed you, just— Help me!”</p><p>She closed her eyes and could barely open them again, the pressure in her head growing. Esha was mustering herself to heave upright again when she heard it — wings fluttering above her. Her hopes lapped high and she twisted to look at the creature.</p><p>It was an orange mass with long plumes of tail feathers, and bright eyes above a scruffy-looking throat. A phoenix. Staring down at her like judgement itself, and Esha wanted to glare right back but she was spinning with the wind again.</p><p>The phoenix creaked in a rusty-door voice: in Esha's seeking ears, the kudzu's green lungta sieved out words.</p><p>“<em>Stop shouting.”</em></p><p>Even with lungta wasted on it, the beast couldn't see sense. Esha huffed and waved an arm up at her dilemma. “I’m <em>trapped</em>. I can’t get my leg free. And my knife is down there, so I need <em>help</em>.”</p><p>“<em>A human is trapped in a red-food ( )? How the lake-blue ( )!” </em></p><p>Some of the croaking didn't make sense: it sidestepped the lungta in Esha's thoughts, too slick to grab meaning from. She hurried more kudzu into her mouth, all the leaves she could rake off the stem.</p><p>While she chewed, the phoenix sat silent. Feathered wings fluttered again and the slightest of weights jolted down the trap line, and now the brazen creature sat staring down its bristly beak at Esha.</p><p>“<em>This is not a killing-trap for phoenix-kin? No violet-coloured ( )?”</em></p><p>“I ...? I was trying to catch things that walk on land. A hare. Maybe a pika.”</p><p>“<em>It follows that you offer me red food?”</em></p><p>“You mean meat? You can have meat, if that's what you want!”</p><p>The phoenix grumbled, and stepped downward to examine Esha's snared leg. Jutting from the edges of its forked tail were its two stringfeathers, each one knotted around a dozen no-doubt-stolen trinkets. The phoenix's fire strikers — two rocks, one dull like iron and one glittering like fools' gold— pulled the left-side stringfeather so it plumbed straight toward Esha's face. If she saw the bird reach for its iron and pyrite, she would be as good as burned.</p><p>“I can’t untie myself.” Esha paused. “Untie — you know what that means?”</p><p>“<em>Criss-cross, tawny to blue.”</em> The phoenix shot a look at Esha, brief as a needle's prick. <em>“Phoenix-kin are made of scarlet knots. Better tying-skill than ( ).”</em></p><p>A woman would have better luck talking to her own shoes. Esha held her tongue, and held it tighter while the phoenix worked its beaktip into the slip knot. Sharp pressure slid between leather and pant cotton but it couldn't slide far enough.</p><p>“<em>Too tight,”</em> the bird creaked.</p><p>“I know that. You’ll need to cut it. I think you might be large enough to hold a knife.”</p><p>“<em>An iron-tool? Good iron, no ( )?”</em></p><p>“Yes, yes! The knife!” Esha flailed toward the ground. “Pick that up, and use the pointed edge on this trap. <em>Cut</em> it. You understand?”</p><p>It stared. And then it hopped off of Esha, sailing past with a rush of feathers. It flapped back up a moment later, alighting sideways on the trap line with the khukuri clasped in one wiry foot. For a moment, the phoenix stretched its ropy neck backward, staring at the khukuri with a gradual flaring of head crests.</p><p>“<em>This, an iron cutting-tool with ... crawling-( )-yellow on the end? Inside the crawling-( )-yellow ... This, it is a ( )-purple-song flower?”</em></p><p>“Gaah,” Esha sighed, “what are you chattering about? It's a khukuri. A knife, for cutting. The golden part is pine resin with an orchid flower inside. Just use the sharp part on the trap! Not on me, though!”</p><p>Still, the phoenix sat there. It turned covetous eyes down at Esha; she suddenly dreaded the beast dropping the khukuri and splitting her skull with it.</p><p>“<em>( )-iron cuts you free of the ( )-trap. That done, what will I receive?”</em></p><p>“I already told you—“</p><p>The phoenix screeched, loud and brassy. <em>“What green-growing will you give?!”</em></p><p>Esha spluttered. “Yams! Millet! Sesame! Any plant humans grow, I'll get you some! Carrots! I don't know, what do you want?!”</p><p>The bird's eyes glittered. Then it turned the khukuri in its clawed grip and applied its beak to the blade. A clumsy cut, and another, and each cut brought downward movement. There was a deciding instant, a stretching like anticipation, and then the yankvine snapped like a bowshot and the ground blessedly knocked Esha's breath from her.</p><p>“<em>This,” </em>the phoenix above her creaked<em>, “a tool with a ( )-purple-song flower inside. This flower is a kind of food. This, I will take.”</em></p><p>“No!” Esha cried. She laid there, joints searing with the night's torture, gasping on the forest floor as another phoenix sat well beyond her grasp.</p><p>It turned away, wings fanning open.<em> “( )-blue kin, this bargain is made.”</em> And with the Kanakisipt khukuri held tight in its claws, it winged away, gone through the pines like snuffed fire.</p><p>“No, <em>no!”</em> Esha pushed off the leaf-littered ground. Her head twirled and everything was hurting now; momentum carried her over onto splayed, shaking hands while her heart contorted. “Goddamned feather-rat! Why?!”</p><p> </p><p>Nothing answered her. She stayed there, bowed to the forest floor, staring at her leathery hands with their hoof-tough nails.</p><p>This morning marked another ruined plan. Here was another boon slipped through Esha's unworthy hands, another pole ripped out of her shaking scaffold of retirement plans.</p><p> </p><p>This time, she didn't know what to do.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After gulping down cups of water, a tar-strong cup of buttered tea, and some pain herb, Esha arrived at Janjuman Farm and accepted the wage penalty for her tardiness. She worked the fields like any other day, a stranger inside her own body, numbly tending the yam sprouts. She was only one person alongside her perfectly honourable field sisters. These other women, these bent colleagues in a rainbow of coloured saris, had husbands and children and full heads of hair under their headwraps, and family names to encompass it all. That was how people deserved to live.</p><p>Maybe, Esha thought, she deserved to be persecuted after all.</p><p>She stopped thinking such things as the sun descended the sky and she left the fields, gripping her pitifully light wage packet. Habit tugged her toward the Farback, toward the trapping circuit. Esha wasn't going back there. Her savings had suffered a blow but she wasn't going back there. She went home instead, and cooked a meal that she stuffed into her mouth, still steaming. While chewing millet and grilled onion, she counted the contents of her savings chest.</p><p>She had enough rupees for a one-week stay in a retirement shelter. Not a good shelter, either. Selling the gold bracelet and wooden spoon set might buy her another few days, or a nurse's fleeting attention. Esha had been counting on that Kanakisipt kuhkuri — the price of family esteem plus the potent speaking lungta of a preserved orchid from Tselaya's peak. If a diplomat or a historian was willing to open their purse, Esha would have gladly kept a blank face while claiming she didn't know where this khukuri came from. Some cousin of the family, perhaps. Some minor noble long since vanished, lost to time.</p><p>And those lies might have bought Esha some <em>peace</em> if a flea-eaten phoenix hadn't ruined everything. She didn't have the strength to be angry about it anymore; she just sat, alone, running her fingers through a small mound of clicking rupees. She needed to do something about this, or else resign herself to shifting in public, horrified faces all around as she started bleating and pissing herself. That thought made Esha sure. She was plenty sullied and incredibly tired, but she wasn't giving up.</p><p>So she needed another plan. Hunting down that thief phoenix would fix her troubles — which was foolishness and Esha knew it. She was no ranger and the phoenix had whole forests to hide in. Even if Esha didn't have retirement to pay for, she didn't have the money to have one specific bird tracked down and killed.</p><p>Gita would look after her, said a craftiness inside Esha. She still had Gita's nameplate, and the extra property token, now kept safe on a necklace beneath all her layered clothes.</p><p>Maybe this budding plan would work if a trapper wanted Gita's property token. Those sold for a tall sum if the right ownership arrangements could be made. Or Esha could enlist someone interested in capturing a phoenix — a live, intelligent one.</p><p>Thinking of the former Yam Plateau animist with his hunkered pet, Esha began to remember what hope felt like. She just needed to find an animist and make a deal.</p><p>Rama's Day came, forgotten by Esha until it was upon her. Janjuman's fields rang with hymns, the workers singing together of past royals and eternal gods. The workday ended at the noon zenith and the fieldwomen took their reprieve as gladly as their pay.</p><p>Esha was glad for it, she had to admit. Songs lingered in her mouth and once she was past the guard station, she kept humming as she walked the market street. This would be a chance to fill her millet sack and butter dish, as well as reassign Gita's property token to her own imperial record. If she could find a particularly benign housing clerk, she might even ask for a listing of diplomats working currently on Yam Plateau. Esha would call her troubles a <em>matter of public well-being</em> and leave the matter at that.</p><p>As Esha rounded a corner, flame caught her eye. A phoenix flew above the metalworkers' homes, its stringfeathers whipping, wings flared wide as it skimmed over bamboo shingles and corrugated tin. A phoenix everywhere Esha <em>went</em>—</p><p>This had to be a nightmare, a delusion of her battered mind. But others in the street saw the bird, and gasped, and pointed. What if this was the same phoenix that stole her khukuri? Gods, Esha thought, what if this was the same phoenix she and Gita struck with a stone? But that couldn't be: its wings worked perfectly well, enough for it to pivot in the air and alight on a horse-headed roof pole. And it landed on one foot only: the other leg was a feathered stump.</p><p>Then a second phoenix, a whole and healthy-looking one, alighted on a roof across the road. A brass tag glinted in its tail — the mark of a tamed bird with an owner. This trained phoenix called out to the one-footed bird, a cry like a pleading song.</p><p>Around her in the market street, people murmured, gripping chunks of bamboo and brick they might need to throw. Guards gathered; one held a bow with an arrow notched but not drawn, not yet. He would shoot if either phoenix began their firestarting movements, the hammer-hard striking of iron and pyrite wielded by an unpredictable animal.</p><p>But the phoenixes made no such movements. They only watched each other, feather crests moving. The crippled phoenix considered the tame one, its hackled back feathers falling slow. It turned, hesitant, and fluttered to a farther rooftop.</p><p>The tame one stayed where it was, raising its door-hinge voice. It chattered a long string of notes. For a mad instant, Esha felt a need for bitter lungta herbs in her mouth.</p><p>The crippled bird considered the tame one's cries, fire fading from its gaze. It creaked low. Then it lifted off, circled with a spiralling of stringfeathers and flew back the way it came. The tame one followed, showing its flashing tag against the lungta-trimmed sky, and the two of them sailed away on the wind.</p><p>The crowds settled, people dropping their makeshift weapons and grumbling about the fright of it all.</p><p>Gradually, Esha turned back the way she came, as well, watching faces to be sure that none watched her back. She picked up her feet and wove between buildings, headed in the direction those phoenixes had vanished. The tagged phoenix had to report to a human animist — or maybe a noble who liked destructive pets, but far more likely an animist.</p><p>She had a hazy idea of where the birds had gone: somewhere southward. The buildings stymied Esha until a thought struck her: if an animist's trained bird was at work, someone had summoned the animist. Probably a farm protecting its crop.</p><p>She kept hurrying south, worldedgeward, until she reached the outer fence of Janjuman's neighbour farm. Their seedling yams — greenburst variety, a good crop if less flavourful than Janjuman's — stood unattended on this, Rama's Day. A few overseers stood gathered at the far edge of the field, and a soldier stood firmly restless beside them. In the middle of the dust-blown field, there were only the two phoenixes and a tall woman of strong bearing — a masked woman.</p><p>She had to be the Manyori woman, because that mask wasn't from Tselaya. It was some pitch-dark material carved in fierce ridges, a deity's face covering the mortal woman from forehead to upper lip. Revulsion and fascination gripped Esha tight: this animist must have been older than her, to have to cover most of her face like that. Older or less fortunate. Maybe both.</p><p>The phoenixes stood silent, and the animist's sonorous voice came rolling like distant thunder. She didn't sound elderly. It was hard to tell past the vowel-heavy patterns of her foreign language and the treetop rattling of her extended lungta — but that couldn't be old woman's worn throat. Whatever she was saying must have reached the one-footed phoenix — because it turned its back to her and stood patient, while the animist knelt and tied a tag onto its tail.</p><p>This stranger did in a scant afternoon what some animists took weeks to achieve. No one was hurt, and no food fields were lost, and now two phoenixes circled together like kites on strings. The animist stood there, statuesque as a story-told rogue, as the tame phoenix settled on her shoulder and its tail feathers fell like a second cloak. Then she waited.</p><p>One of the farm overseers approached her, shuffling along tilled lines. He spoke vanishingly timid words and gave a payment packet to the animist.</p><p>Her masked face bowed in a nod. She gave namaste to the overseer – and as if to accent the gesture, her phoenix bowed to match.</p><p>If nothing else, Esha needed to know. Would this Manyori speak with dignity to a low-caste, and was she truly lax enough to live together with a tar dealer? Because that sounded like someone who might stoop to help Esha Of The Fields mend her torn-rag life.</p><p>So Esha waited by the fence until the farm staff dispersed, and the animist left the yam field gates. Here she was, close enough to call out to but the two phoenixes made Esha forget all her words. She simply stood, fish-mouthed. The animist passed her by, tall and present as the mountain they stood on, her visible skin patterned with tattoos as bold as tiger stripes. Esha received a near-secret flick of eyes within the fierce mask, and matching glances from the thieving beasts. Then the animist was striding away in the street dust. Esha watched the back of her masked head — the patterned strap that held the mask on, with soil-dark skin and wavy, human hair wound into a swirling topknot. Someone different. Someone Esha needed.</p><p>“Hail,” Esha stammered. “Good animist?”</p><p>She stopped. She turned her secret eyes back to Esha and planted her feet like tree roots. “Citizen?”</p><p>Esha signed namaste as she should have already, bowing deep and feeling embarrassment hot behind her cheekbones. “I hope you'll forgive my forthrightness, but I'd like to make a deal with you.”</p><p>A smile pulled the animist's broad lips, stretching the tattoo on her chin. Her eyes' glimmer darted to Esha's shoulder, to her farming caste marker, and the smile remained. “I don't discuss business in the street. If you'd like a deal, come see me in my home. Colleagues of yours will know the way.”</p><p>With that, she kept on, her wind-flapping cloak overlaid with the tail feathers of the tame phoenix. Esha was fish-mouthed again until she hummed a decision to herself. That Manyori was strange but respectable, which was all Esha really wanted. All she had to do was find a way to talk to the animist. She walked brisk toward town, because she had a strong hunch of how to do that.</p><p> </p><p>Ren welcomed her inside, returning Esha's namaste while chomping betel. He looked healthier these past days — fuller in the face, surely better fed.</p><p>“I think,” Esha told him, “you've got connections that will help me, friend.”</p><p>If Esha wished to enter the Manyori women's home and do business, there was a sequence she had to follow. Arrive after duskfall and don't draw notice: the ladies did not appreciate guards' attention.</p><p>They were glad to entertain low-castes, though, Ren assured her. Esha only needed to use the special door chime and then ask for <em>bird-nose</em>.</p><p>It was a nonsensical passphrase, Esha thought, but a prudent way of doing business. This way, trusted friends would lead more trusted friends to the animist's door and she wouldn't face anyone dishonourable — no more dishonourable than Esha was, anyway.</p><p>Night fell. Esha followed the dyemaker's directions, toward the mountainside and the shadow of the higher plateaus. The homes here were built of clay brick here but still humble in design, barely within the glow of the Empire-maintained oil lamps the higher castes enjoyed in their streets. Esha watched that distant street — set into the mountainside, firelit and hazy like the gate to another world. No one there saw her except one guard, who stared brief and then kept his eyes moving, probably merely bored.</p><p>As leisurely as she could manage, Esha peered at the house's patch of yellow flags. One flag had a lengthly request for lake shellfish but only certain kinds of it — and below that, a black smudge on its tip. This was the Manyoris' home.</p><p>Esha circled the right side of the house and, refreshed with relief once she was out of the guard's line of sight, searched the shadows until she found a hollow pipe set into the wall.</p><p>She had brought pebbles in her satchel, like the dyemaker said. One by one, she dropped seven of them down the pipe to clatter away into the dark. Then Esha returned to the front door to wait for answer.</p><p>No light shone through the narrow slashes of windows, though. No movement showed from within. Esha stood there conspicuous, without enough eyes to watch all the shadows around her. She turned back to the door — but movement flickered above her, on the roof's edge. There sat a phoenix, staring at her with lake-bottom eyes.</p><p>Esha stared back, her fright gone but her innards still glowing hot. She had seen more than enough phoenixes for this lifetime — but if the animist kept phoenixes as pets, she would need to rally her patience. This bird shifted on its feet and something flashed on its backside; this was one of the tagged birds from earlier and its master had to be nearby.</p><p>“Hail,” Esha called out, her voice ripping the quiet. She looked again to the shadows around, and the many building corners that might be hiding a listener. “Is anyone here?”</p><p>Silence answered her. She waited. Wind whistled over tin roofs outside and the phoenix blinked calm at her.</p><p>“Well?” Esha asked it. “Where is your owner?” She felt immediately foolish, talking to the thing, but standing around useless was foolish, too.</p><p>It tipped its head, crests moving.</p><p>“I want to see the animist,” Esha said, enunciated clearly like she would speak an order to a dog. Maybe trained phoenixes knew commands in human tongues. They were clever enough to be menaces, so it might surely be possible. After a heart-gripping hesitation, Esha lowered her voice and added, “Bird-nose.”</p><p>The phoenix stood. It turned suddenly toward the peak of the roof, hopping up the incline and over, out of sight, its two stringfeathers trailing away like knotted lengths of yarn.</p><p>Esha was alone in the street again. She grumbled a small oath, and shifted on her aching feet. She resolved to leave in another five moments and raised fingers to chance scratching under her headwrap, where her goat pelt always itched after a day of sweat.</p><p>“What do you want of bird-nose?”</p><p>Esha dropped her hand, heart turning to ice — at the sight of the tall shape around the house's corner. A tall, large-nosed figure stood in shadow. Round curves marked her a woman and her voice was low and accented just like the Manyori animist's.</p><p>“You—“ Esha spluttered on her confusion. She couldn't see a caste sigil on this woman, couldn't imagine how to ask or explain.</p><p>“Out with it,” the animist's sister said. She spoke Grewian, accent-clipped but without lungta. “What do you wish of bird-nose?”</p><p><em>Bird-nose</em> wasn't a pass phrase, Esha realized. It was a name — surely not a name the Empire had on any records.</p><p>Rank was moot and Esha was here to ask someone's favour. She went ahead and pressed her hands together, offering namaste to this Birdnose. “I'd like to make a deal. There's a phoenix—“</p><p>“I know. It's fine,” Birdnose said. Her nose really did command her entire face, like a beak. “Your name?”</p><p>“Gita of the Fields.”</p><p>“Show me your payment.”</p><p>“Wh-What?”</p><p>Heart in her throat, Esha's plans all flew away on wind. She had hoped to suggest the thief phoenix as both target and reward, but that was no collateral. She couldn't offer her heirloom khukuri for the same reason, and her meagre trove of rupees was across town in her home. She had only one thing to offer right now — and under Birdnose's silent glower, Esha reached into her clothing.</p><p>“I don't know if this is enough for a first offer,” she relented, “or too much. But it's all I can show to your eyes.” Uncurling her hand, she revealed Gita Of The Fields's last remnant, her property token and the shining nameplate attached.</p><p>Birdnose's eyes flared within their deep sockets. “You're offering the property token?”</p><p>“That's right.”</p><p>Birdnose took it — with a soft hand, no laborour's hand to be sure. She drew a knife with a tooth-shaped blade and pushed its tip against Gita's property token. The token didn't yield.</p><p>“Good,” she said, “No offence meant, but I've been offered silvered wax before.”</p><p>“I wouldn't insult you before asking for your help.”</p><p>Birdnose considered her. Esha held the gaze like the honourable woman she wished she was.</p><p>“Please,” Birdnose said, “come in.”</p><p>She led Esha around the back of the house, into a door only discernible from the wall by its knotted latch string. Inside, the respectable brick home looked more like the elder relatives of Esha's shack — with walls made of unfinished bamboo and hand-splinted furniture, lit acrid by a pine candle. The hearth fire smouldered into a tin chimney, one of three openings in the ceiling.</p><p>The phoenix was there, perched on a wrought metal stand seemingly meant for it. Esha felt more eyes on her — and noticed another phoenix sitting in the corner, the one with a missing foot. She had never heard of an animist who kept multiple phoenixes but then, some people liked to stockpile.</p><p>Esha returned her attention to Birdnose, to find that she was being studied, too. By a Manyori woman dressed in porridge-plain homespun but still clearly kin to the masked woman Esha had stared at earlier. She was bigger than most Grewian men, the same broad frame as the animist, and the dark tattoo lines on her chin were the very same that the animist had. Maybe a family's defining mark.</p><p>“Please, sit.” Birdnose gestured to a rough-felted stool.</p><p>Esha was bristlingly aware of her body, of her presence in this den of secrets. She lowered herself on panging knees, and she sat.</p><p>Birdnose eyed Esha then, and placed Gita's nameplate on a table between them. “About this deal you want — we may speak freely now. The walls are double-thick to hold in our voices, and one of my birds is keeping watch outside.”</p><p>“One of <em>your</em> birds?” Esha said. She had never heard of a tar dealer keeping pets who could start fires.</p><p>“The fellow you spoke to already.” Smirking fond, Birdnose said, “He's trustworthy. Take that on my word.”</p><p>Phoenixes were as trustworthy as gamblers, bandits, and next month's weather. Esha stifled her frown.</p><p>“And since you seem trustworthy as well,” Birdnose went on, “I'll trade for your property token. You must want quite a supply.”</p><p>“Not a supply — only one task.”</p><p>Birdnose was picking up a lockbox, a small one overwhelmed with steel bands and latches, when she froze and stared stark at Esha. “A <em>task</em> ...? Wait. Say it clearly. Are you here for tar?”</p><p>Esha knew now why she felt a warning in her bones. “Gladtar? No!” She never turned down an offered pipe full of gladtar — but to trade a property token for drugs would be madness. “I need someone who— There's a phoenix, I don't know what to do!”</p><p>“<em>Animism</em> service.”</p><p>“Yes!”</p><p>Birdnose aimed her spearpoint stare at Esha's caste sigil. “For your farm? Who sent you?”</p><p>“No one sent me. I have a bargain to offer from my own pockets.”</p><p>She lifted a hand and pulled a cord Esha hadn't noticed hanging against the bamboo wall. Up the chimneys, barely audible past the wind, a tin bell rang — and a phoenix swooped down through a chimney, to land on another metal perch.</p><p>“Farmwoman don't typically call upon animists,” Birdnose said, with tight-strung calm. “I wouldn't have met you this way if I had known.”</p><p>“That's fair,” Esha said. She should have said clearly that animism services were what she wanted — but she was unworthy as a wordsmith, life had long since taught her. “I'm sure I don't seem like a patron of animism but if you'll take my payment, I need help from you. Or someone like you. I'm in no position to refuse anyone.”</p><p>Birdnose twisted her broad mouth, considering. She pushed the lockbox deep under a table, as though Esha might try to peek at the illicit things she had just been offered. “You said there's a phoenix causing you trouble?”</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>“That's why you're offering the property token ...?”</p><p>“That's right.” Esha shook inside but she held her chin high.</p><p>Squinting, Birdnose asked, “That's much too high a price for a bird bothering a patch of yams. Dare I ask what you want?”</p><p>“The phoenix took something precious from me, and I want it back. I don't know where the bird went, or if it'll covet your valuables, too. I ... I just need what's mine. If that's too far different from telling a phoenix to leave a field, that's fine — we can take a rock to its skull, or poison it.”</p><p>Birdnose raised a hand toward her face, to the peeling skin on her cheek — and then recoiled as though memory slapped her hand away.</p><p>“Or we can leave it alive,” Esha hurried out of her mouth, “If you deem that proper.”</p><p>“Wait. This isn't right.”</p><p>“What? I— Please forgive my—“</p><p>Birdnose hesitated again, her hand twitching toward her face on a taut string of habit. “<em>Quiet.</em> Just ... Know a little peace, Gita Of The Fields. I will return in a moment — I need to change.” She strode from the room, closing a side door firm behind her. A lock scraped.</p><p>And with that, Esha was alone, but not forgotten as long as the three phoenixes stared at her. Two on perches, one sitting in the corner. She kept as still as a new deer fawn for the first long moment. The phoenixes were trained but Esha wouldn't know how to command them if they took a liking to the hearth fire's embers.</p><p>She had to move eventually. Breathing normally, Esha shifted her stiffening legs. If they noticed, they didn't react. A few times, she made and broke eye contact with the beasts — dreading that such staring would offend the phoenixes, like it did vicious dogs — until after long moments, the phoenixes all turned away from her. They hopped away with explosively quiet flutters of wings and clicking of claws, to a dish on a sitting table where they ate small morsels. Hopefully Birdnose had left them for that purpose. Esha just memorized the bamboo stalks patterning the walls.</p><p>The lock scraped again, and the door revealed the animist — wearing her carved mask, the firelight letting amber hints of her eye colour through. Amber just like Birdnose's eyes were, and set in the same tall-framed body, too. The pointedly ordinary Tselayan clothing was gone, replaced with tiers of rough plant fibre. Her diplomat caste sigil hung from a ladder of bone beads. She was tall and curvaceous and layered with stories: this was the foreigner that Esha had been expecting.</p><p>“I greeted you under the wrong name,” the animist said, her delicate-nailed hand trailing off the door handle. “With greatest respect, I would like to correct it.”</p><p>This was too familiar a voice. Like a puppet, Esha nodded, while she began to understand.</p><p>“If you came seeking tar or weeds, I would be Birdnose. But to you? No. As long as I practice animism on this mountain, call me by my truer name: Atarangi.”</p><p>“Your sister ... Isn't a sister at all? Just your other name?”</p><p>“Another name and another face. I trust you won't speak of my dishonesty to any passing guard.”</p><p>“By gods' eyes, I promise.” No one would believe that a farmwoman hadn't come looking for Birdnose's goods, anyway.</p><p>“And call me only by Atarangi, while I show this face.”</p><p>“I will, good diplomat. Will you hear my request now?”</p><p>“Tell me. I will make tea.”</p><p>Against everything else that had happened, it was strange to see Atarangi the diplomat stoking an ordinary cooking fire, squatting and shoving sticks of bamboo into the coals like anyone else would.</p><p>To begin the story, Esha gave small, stumbling truths. She was farming caste, she said. Grown into a woman on the fields of Janjuman Farms, with yellowmeat yams in her hands. She wasn't always farming caste, and her retirement was now bearing down upon her.</p><p>“Your troubles sound heavy,” Atarangi said.</p><p>“We've all got troubles.”</p><p>Atarangi thought on that. Then she asked, “About your place in the world, you said you weren't always farming caste. Did you marry away?”</p><p>“No,” Esha said, with practiced calm. She longed for a hot cup in her hands but Atarangi was just now placing a kettle on the coals.</p><p>“Mm,” Atarangi said. She snatched a glance at Esha, before fussing with some tea leaves.</p><p>With her mask in the way, it was impossible to read her face. She was impossible enough to read before, as Birdnose; her brows hardly needed a mask over them. Esha felt her own horns and ears bulked under her headwrap; she tasted the old terror-bile of turning away from the mountaintop; she considered giving Gita's story of disavowment, instead, because Esha knew that story as well as her own but it hurt a little less.</p><p>“This isn't what I came here to tell you,” Esha said. “I'm here to have a phoenix captured.”</p><p>“It took something precious to you,” Atarangi repeated.</p><p>“A khukuri. It bears the Kanakisipt name, which is valuable enough. There's a resin jewel in the hilt with a preserved speaking orchid in it, for those who don't trade in names.”</p><p>Atarangi glowed with interest. “I have heard of the Kanakisipt family's history in diplomacy. Haven't been graced with a chance to speak with them yet, or sample their variety of orchid. Maybe someday.”</p><p>“Are you being received well on Tselaya, good Atarangi?”</p><p>Her smile twisted wry. “I have been granted a caste rank and allowed to set foot on the mountain. Such is all the beginning I need.”</p><p>“We have many rules to learn.”</p><p>“Ah, but that is true anywhere. You are Grewian, yes? Butter in your tea?”</p><p>“I'd like that.” Esha was beginning to realize how little she had eaten today, a trouble that buttered tea could balm.</p><p>“So, you have lost a Kanakisipt heirloom ... You yourself are Of The Fields, though.”</p><p>The silent question was a needle through Esha's heart. Strange, after all this time, that she hadn't built a thick enough callus.</p><p>“I've met them,” she said, “when I was a child. They're talented, but they keep their warmth to themselves.”</p><p>Picking up the teapot, filling Esha's cup with golden liquid, Atarangi offered, “I've always wondered about that — the lineages of higher climes being so reluctant to share their warmth with a neighbour. Doesn't seem like it would make a community strong.”</p><p>“That's what the lungta diplomacy is for.”</p><p>“You've negotiated with a Kankasipt?”</p><p>“I don't have that kind of skill.” Esha had no more to say than that.</p><p>“Done them a service, then?” Atarangi asked. Her gaze was level behind the mask, harvesting her thoughts far from where Esha could see them.</p><p>“It's a <em>family</em> khukuri,” Esha said again. “How I got it truly isn't the point, Atarangi. Please.”</p><p>“Apologies.”</p><p>Esha swallowed, and went on. “It's a fine tool on its own, worth thousands even to a cheapskate. But if a person wished to smash the resin jewel and extract the flower, the lungta could do far more valuable work than that. You're a diplomat — you must know more about it than I would.”</p><p>“I do. And phoenixes have a taste for lungta, too. Tell me more about how you lost this khukuri, Gita — I think I should meet this phoenix.”</p><p>Perfect, Esha thought. And in a steady voice, Esha told Atarangi of the night she went trapping and caught only herself.</p><p>During the story, one phoenix left on a rattling of feathers, up through the ceiling vent; the others stayed and watched Esha with their head tipped curious. Esha tried to ignore their presence and focus only on Atarangi's masked face.</p><p>“You spoke with a phoenix on your first attempt?” she wondered. “You're no animist, are you?”</p><p>“No,” Esha spat. “I just— I was scared, I did it to save my life.” It wasn't her first attempt speaking with a beast, but her second. She held that in confidence and hoped it wouldn't matter.</p><p>Atarangi sipped her tea. “The phoenix clearly wanted the knife?”</p><p>“It did.”</p><p>“And the knife was more valuable than anything you were hoping to catch.”</p><p>“I shouldn't have brought it — I was foolish. But I was only thinking of human thieves.”</p><p>Atarangi waited — perhaps for Esha to go on, perhaps just to consider what Esha was saying. Her gaze had sharpened again, prying for answers. Esha drank deep of her tea, and watched a phoenix nearby eating some morsel from a tin plate. There were several plates of plant trimmings in the room, now that Esha noticed them — betel shavings, bamboo sprouts and juniper berries laid out pleasingly with gumgrass garnish, apparently meant for the birds to eat. It must have kept them mild-mannered, having food whenever they wished.</p><p>“Regardless of where it came from,” Atarangi said like she hid a valuable coin in her mouth, “the orchid-tipped khukuri was something the phoenix decided she wanted.”</p><p>Esha pushed old heartsores out of her thoughts; this was business. “I couldn't understand everything the bird said. I'm no animist.”</p><p>One of the phoenixes chirped, a sudden and shrill sound in the small, warm space. It chirped a repeating note and then trilled, long and warbling; Atarangi glanced sharp to it but didn't reprimand the bird. She inclined her head and considered Esha again.</p><p>“Tell me again what the phoenix said. Everything you can remember, as much as you understood.”</p><p>Esha was pierced already by all the questions, full of holes and sick of answering. But she waved a frustrated hand and repeated it again. “I wish I could recall what it was babbling about colours. Crawling-something-yellow. And something-purple-song ... I don't know.”</p><p>Atarangi lit behind her mask. “Purple-song? You're sure you don't remember the meaning that came before that?”</p><p>Esha sighed. “I'm surprised I remember that much.”</p><p>Setting down her tea cup, folding her knuckles together and examining the shadows between, Atarangi said, “That's an interesting development, Gita Of The Fields. When phoenixes speak of purple-song, they're usually referring to flowers from much higher up Tselaya, the sort rich in speaking lungta. If a phoenix is finding purple-song blooms this far down, I'd be remiss to guess where.”</p><p>Esha nodded. Any valuable flowers that showed themselves on the lower plateaus were whisked into hidden, stone-walled hothouses. Only the higher, prestigious plateaus kept their blooms under glass for all to see.</p><p>“If this phoenix you met is able to recognize a high-mountain orchid, and name it a purple-song flower ... Well, it must be flying between plateaus. Not unusual on its own — they'll travel if they're looking for food for their chicks, or new seeds to plant in their home territory. But a phoenix that confident in identifying an orchid as song-food, coming down to Yam Plateau, speaking with a strange human and snatching her metal tool ... That's definitely unusual.”</p><p>“It's a valuable phoenix, then?”</p><p>“It spoke with you. Outside its comfortable territory, it met a strange human and in a matter of moments, agreed to do what you asked.”</p><p>“What of it?”</p><p>“That's not what phoenixes <em>do</em>, my good yam digger. They have their own rules and for some reason, this phoenix broke the rules for you. I can't say why this one did it. But you might be the only human he or she is willing to speak to, regarding this traded object. I might need you to come journeying with me.”</p><p>Mouth filling with bitterness, Esha looked away. “I'm not young enough to travel. My legs are ...”</p><p>“Beginning to change?”</p><p>Esha took another deep gulp of her tea. The animist's gaze pried at her, no doubt thinking that Esha didn't look old enough to be shifting so dramatically. She had the wind-worn face of a field worker but she was certainly no greying elder. Atarangi's eyes were curious as bright stars.</p><p>“The real issue here,” Esha said firm, “is that I'm in no condition to travel. But I need the travelling done. That's why I need the khukuri back, that's why I'm offering you good property.”</p><p>With a considering hum, Atarangi shelved her curiosity and returned to dignified grace, raising teacup to her mouth. “A phoenix from higher up the mountain ... I'll need to know where he or she came from, any information you can grant me. Which direction did this phoenix fly?”</p><p>“I …“ Esha shook her head; cardinal directions had been the last thing on her mind while she dangled helpless in that trap. “Maybe if I went back there and looked at the trees, I could say? Does it matter?”</p><p>“If it tells me which plateau the phoenix lives on, then yes, it matters. Unless you're paying me to comb every plateau between here and the skypeak.”</p><p>Esha definitely couldn't trade for that. She sighed harsh. “Could I just bring you to the scene? I have traps left to check, anyway—“</p><p>“What?” Atarangi’s eyes were suddenly cold knives. “You didn’t check all of the traps?!”</p><p>“Well, no! I—”</p><p>“If you didn’t like hanging there helpless for hours, surely no other creature would!”</p><p>“They’re just—“ Esha held her tongue before saying <em>just animals.</em> The tagged phoenix stared at her, just as unsettling as the whites of Atarangi's eyes. “I— I didn't have time! If I didn't report to work ...!”</p><p>Atarangi stood, and snatched the near-empty cup from Esha's hands. In one fury-smooth motion, she tossed both cups of negotiation tea into the fire's ashes to hiss and gurgle.</p><p>“Go check the last of your traps,” she said. “We can talk when you’re not tormenting living creatures.”</p><p>She said no more, nothing to oil the silence. The door slammed behind Esha and she was alone in the alleyway dark again.</p><p>She straightened her headwraps in the moment she took a considering breath. She was going back to the Farback, then. Tomorrow. Or, her sore heart suggested, maybe tonight. Before negotiations broke down, Esha had been starting to like the calm, two-faced animist — and besides that, she was in no habit of giving up.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If Esha was going to spend another short-rationed night of sleep tromping along her damned trap line, she was going to have a hot meal first. She kindled a quick cooking fire and made chapatti bread, and slathered it with butter and sesame seeds, and devoured it with all the grace of a lardback pig.</p><p>That would be the one blessing of the goat taking her: she could eat whenever she liked. Eat any plants she found, right out in the open, because goats cared for no laws or licences. They didn't care about looks, or bloodlines, or about other goats' mates and whether those pairs were blessed with kids. And as a goat, Esha would be able to sleep, too — oh, what she would have paid for a day entirely made of rest.</p><p>Maybe, the thoughts said, tumbling too fast to stop, it would better if Esha walked out into the forest and never came back. Like penniless folk did. If she needed to lie and sneak and fight for every rupee, maybe it would be best to bear her transformation cold and alone.</p><p>
  <em>Let’s not give up. We’ve done enough giving up.</em>
</p><p>That clear shard of Gita's voice brought back more memory — the impossibly clear-edged sight of her falling; her wide eyes; the phoenix's struggling. Gita had been a steady current of heaven's wind in Esha's declining life. Gita had been ambitious and clever, and she thought Esha deserved to retire: she died for that belief, so it had to be true.</p><p>With the last embers of the cooking fire, Esha lit a juniper branch and put it on her prayer stand, humming a hymn while the perfumed smoke twirled. Gods watch over this next wretched plan of hers, she prayed. Let her have a little luck, just a little, despite the wrongs she had committed. Her ankle bones felt odd within her limping leg; she wouldn't be sinning much longer.</p><p>How different it felt this time, walking the Farback's game trails in patterns of shadow and moonbright, this time with no defiance in her heart but instead a proper amount of shame. She sprang her traps and dismantled them, into vine and leather scraps she might find a new use for. The cut scraps of her large trap had a ranger's reprimand note in them; Esha scoffed and left those where they laid.</p><p>This snare was a small one near a muck-smelling lake. Esha remembered the location of this trap well. Brickmasons came for the brown-coloured clay, and a few people were patient enough to dig for salt deposits; Esha wasn't one of them. Trees grew sparse and sparingly in such briny soil: she had only found one pine sapling strong enough to bear a decent-sized trap.</p><p>As Esha drew near the trap, rounding rock outcroppings, she saw something hanging snared — something that still lived, because it flapped explosively as Esha approached. It was a crane, a gold-crowned one with huge white wings and a terrified lightning in its eyes.</p><p>Esha stood outside the range of its beating wings, and she looked on it. Maybe the feathers would be worth some rupees, but the time spent plucking them was worth more. She didn't relish telling Atarangi that she plucked a bird, either. At the base of it, Esha found that didn’t want to kill anything else, not like this. Maybe her honour was trying to grow back.</p><p>She took a step closer, held up her forearms to catch the battering wings, and she regarded the slip knot.</p><p>“How in the Creator's name–“</p><p>Pain bit her hand as the crane pecked her.</p><p>“Aah! Stop that!” She reached for the knot around the bird’s leg and withdrew her hand in time to avoid another peck. “I’m trying to help you, stupid thing!”</p><p>A stupid thing that couldn’t understand her. Esha recalled the way she could make the bird understand humans' tongue. She was quick to talk with baser creatures if it meant convenience, it seemed.</p><p>She dug the weightlessly dry slice of betel from her satchel, and chewed until lungta trickled into her head. Listening, guiding lungta toward the sound, Esha could hear rudimentary ideas in the crane’s squawking.</p><p>“Bird?”</p><p>“<em>Danger!”</em> it shouted. “<em>Danger! Predator!</em>”</p><p>“Quiet, I'm not going to hurt you.”</p><p>The crane turned one glassy eye to her, stilling for a stunned instant. Then it flapped again, struggling like just noticing the strap still around its feet. “<em>Danger! Go away!”</em></p><p>“Listen,” Esha said. “I’m trying to get you out of—“ Esha held that thought back: cranes were beautiful birds with dancers' feet, but far duller of mind than any phoenix ever encountered. She tried again: “I don’t eat cranes. I'm not your enemy.”</p><p>“<em>Predator!”</em> The crane beat its wings with new force, swinging erratic on its trap line and shrieking as Esh grabbed its scaly, twiggy legs in one hand. “<em>Big predator!”</em></p><p>What a waste of lungta, Esha thought as she guided her bent, handle-less khukuri blade between the crane’s bound ankles. She yanked the stub of a blade toward her, managing to miss the crane's damned legs each time, until finally the leather was cut through. As soon as Esha opened her hand, the crane burst away in a flurry of feathers and kicking claws.</p><p>“You're endlessly welcome,” Esha muttered.</p><p>“<em>Free!</em>” the crane shouted. It landed a few meters off, wobbling onto its own feet and then turning its stormy eyes back to Esha. “<em>Danger! Predator!”</em> It paused accusingly, before stalking to the water's edge and tipping water down its throat.</p><p>Demons take the ungrateful thing, then. Esha cut down the trap's moorings and wound the remaining leather scrap into a roll.</p><p>The crane waded in the lake shallows now, its muttering carrying in the open air. “<em>Food? Food? No plant food here. Water food?</em>”</p><p>She rewrapped her knife in its cotton rag, ignoring the crane's muttering and letting lungta settle in her body. She kept watching the crane, though. It plucked some round morsel and tossed it down its throat. <em>Water food</em>, the crane said. Maybe snails, or the clams she found sometimes in Janjuman's winter stews. Esha had never cared for clams; foreigners said it was because Grewiers didn't eat enough ocean food to develop a taste for it.</p><p>But if she remembered correctly, Manyori people did eat ocean food. It wouldn't hail from any great sea but Tselaya's shellfish might be a welcome apology offering — an offering Esha <em>did</em> need to make.</p><p>She rolled up her pant legs and sari hem, and the crane fluttered peevishly away as Esha waded out into the water.</p><p>It was an oddly warm bath to walk in, warmer than the spring night's air. She gathered a handful of glistening, blue-streaked snails, and then movement caught her eye — something swimming in the deepest of the lake basin. Something long-bodied, and fluid as a scarf in the wind.</p><p>Old farmers' warnings wafted into Esha's mind: the deeps had water serpents in them. <em>Deep air, earth or water, might rob sons and daughters.</em> She forgot that sometimes, since she farmed the surface and only risked contact with the mountain's depths when she cut bamboo. She shuffled back toward shore, stumbling on algae-greased stones. And as Esha continued turning rocks in the ankle-deep shallows, she watched the crane, which cackled uneasily at her and at the lake depths, too.</p><p>With a damp pouch full of shellfish, Esha walked between homes, a gut-remembered pattern of turns to Atarangi's home. Esha stood at the door, choked by unease, until she told herself that she hadn't wasted a night and drenched herself and risked serpent attack for nothing. She dropped seven pebbles down the pipe. Then she waited.</p><p>Long moments passed. If Atarangi was out — maybe conducting business under her Birdnose guise — then Esha had wasted her time and heartache and she would have to eat the slimy, gritty peace offering herself. She was considering turning away when she saw eyes through the slit window — dark eyes on a bristly, beaked face. A tame phoenix was better than nothing.</p><p>“Atarangi,” Esha told it. “I want to see Atarangi.”</p><p>She lifted the shellfish pouch, however stupid it was to think that the phoenix understood. It trilled, though, and fluttered away. Esha recalled the tin trays of lungta foods, left offered for the phoenixes to eat. Maybe the bird did understand food offerings.</p><p>A quick moment later, the phoenix appeared on the roof, hunched at the edge. It peered down at Esha, croaked at her, and hopped away toward the house's back corner. Trying to tell her some crude message, maybe. She followed — until the back door and its hugely-knotted string latch came into shadowed sight.</p><p>And Esha barely had time to wonder if it was right to open those knots herself, when the phoenix darted down to it on flickering wings and applied beak and feet to the task. The strings unlaced faster than Esha could have managed. Clever creature, Esha grudgingly thought as the phoenix finished and landed on the ground.</p><p>She kept thinking that while the phoenix stared at her. It looked to the dangling door ties, and back to her. Then it chirruped and stretched its neck — pointing with its beak. Directing Esha inside, she numbly realized.</p><p>What a bizarre way to welcome a guest, or permit a visitor, or whatever tier of politeness Esha was being afforded. She opened the door. And in the strangeness, she had the presence of mind to hold the door from swinging, so the phoenix could enter, too.</p><p>The bird led her the obvious few steps to the living area. There sat Atarangi, a bent shape under a bristle-fibered cloak, filmed with light from a candle. Wrinkled pages of handwriting laid before her, and Atarangi wrote her own, utterly unsimilar handwriting onto new sheets — translating, maybe, since that was a diplomat's duty.</p><p>Esha's sandals rang like cannon shots in the quiet. The tannic awkwardness of their previous day was back, suddenly, bitter as regret.</p><p>“Well?” Atarangi asked. “Did you catch anything in your traps?”</p><p><em>No,</em> it would have been easy to say. But the lying wasn't easy anymore; honesty tasted better in the pit of Esha mostly-human stomach.</p><p>“I had a crane trapped,” Esha said, slowly. “It was alive and vigorous, though — I released it. It was well enough to fly off right away, it went straight back to looking for food. And I took down the other traps. They won't catch anything else.”</p><p>Atarangi was turning toward her, drawn like a pulled thread: the shelled food clicked wet every time Esha shifted the bag in her grasp.</p><p>“What do you have?” Atarangi asked hard.</p><p>“Aah, well. I've brought you an apology.” Esha lifted the bag toward the candlelight. “Your people eat shellfish, is that right?” She rolled opened the sack to reveal its contents, the wet-stone shine of dozens of shells.</p><p>Atarangi’s mouth pressed thinner.</p><p>“A-And I've heard that these are more valuable to you than to Grewier folk,” Esha ventured, “We cook them tough.”</p><p>With cautious hands, reaching as though into a snake's burrow, Atarangi took the gathered edges of the jute pouch.</p><p>“These are clams.”</p><p>“Mostly,” Esha blurted. “There are a few snails as well, they're all safe to eat by the best of my knowledge.”</p><p>A thinking weight hung in the air as Atarangi reached inside, lifting each shelled thing into the candlelight to examine. How gentle she was, turning each one in her fingers like a glass treasure. One oblong-shelled snail received more of her attention, and a tighter press of her mouth under the mask; Esha felt dread again.</p><p>“What is this kind of snail called?” Atarangi asked, entirely too calm.</p><p>“I— I don't know. I've never paid attention.”</p><p>“It can't be the same breed of snail that we see in my homeland. Your water isn't salty enough.” Between her fine-nailed fingers, Atarangi scrutinized the patterned curve of the shell, and the jagged-opened underside with a phlegm-textured creature inside. “But ... it reminds me of a cowrie.”</p><p>Esha said nothing. She had no inkling of what a cowrie looked like.</p><p>“Gita of the Fields,” Atarangi said low, “listen well. Cowrie shells aren’t trade goods. They’re not some grimy coin to be passed around. These are a gift from the Sea-Many. They're a gift from one ally to another. You didn't know that, did you?”</p><p>“No! I only meant these as a gift. To ... to apologize for my offending you, with the traps.”</p><p>Atarangi held silent, with the pouch clutched in hard-knuckled hands. She glanced to the phoenix perched across the room, the one flexing its head crests.</p><p>“You said that you released the crane,” Atarangi finally said, “and dismantled all your traps? You're here with an unclouded heart?”</p><p>“I suppose so? Please, I can't hunt down a phoenix myself, you're the only animist I've ever met and if a different animist insists on coin money, I—I can't—“</p><p>“Enough.” Atarangi's voice was soft now, a tired rush like dropped cloth. She turned away, bringing the shellfish pouch to her water pail. “I will make these my breakfast. I accept your business deal, Gita. And I will consider whether we can be allies.”</p><p>“Allies, partners in business, any similar thing is fine,” Esha said. “I just need that khukuri. And I won’t lodge it in your back: I will give you my promise.”</p><p>However strange a foreigner could be, and whatever the differences life had assigned to them, no ally was bad to have. Esha was sure of that as Atarangi filled a bowl with water for the shellfish.</p><p>With a smile-touched face, Atarangi said, “This must be a late hour for you. Get some sleep, Gita. We'll discuss the bargain further when we've got sun to see by.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next evening, Esha accepted more tea from Atarangi and shared every detail she could remember. The phoenix's lungta-garbled words; her own panicked thoughts; the direction it seemed to fly through the ragged-glimpsed treetops; the condition of its feathers.</p><p>“It looked healthy enough, it had no trouble taking flight. That's strange, isn't it? I've heard of sick or crippled creatures desperate enough to attack humans — but this bird? It <em>chose</em> to do it.”</p><p>“What colour were the feathers?”</p><p>“Orange.” That was the obvious answer and Esha said it anyway.</p><p>“As bright as the worldedge flags? More of a dead leaf colour? Something else?”</p><p>Mouth twisting, Esha asked, “Does it matter?”</p><p>“It does. It helps if I know who I'm speaking with, and what their motivations might be.”</p><p>“Ah,” Esha said small. “I ... think it was more dull-coloured. Like unfired red clay.”</p><p>“Duller orange phoenixes are mostly female. But size is the simplest part of the difference. Kin? Come here, please.”</p><p>Atarangi beckoned to the phoenix sitting nearest: Esha was moderately sure this was the bird that had unknotted the door for her. It landed on Atarangi's outstretched arm and sat tall — as though posing for Esha to admire.</p><p>“This friend of mine is a male,” Atarangi said. “Is he smaller than the phoenix you saw?”</p><p>There was no way to be sure of anything that happened that nightmarish morning — but Esha still felt a gathering agreement, a visceral thought that the Kanakisipt khukuri would look larger in this particular phoenix's claws. Esha nodded. “Smaller, yes. He's got handsomer colours than the thief bird, too.”</p><p>“Yes, he is handsome phoenix.” Atarangi grinned, her teeth shiningly white against her skin, while the bird fluffed his feathers larger. Maybe he did understand the words of the compliment — but he wasn't a person capable of wielding lungta. But he had eaten handfuls of lungta foods from the tray.</p><p>This was a bizarre conversation, Esha's sensibilities said.</p><p>Her merriment subsiding, Atarangi shooed the phoenix off her arm; her visible face returned to calm business. “Very well. We know which plants the phoenix is familiar with, and that she'll likely have claimed a nesting territory. I still can't be sure why she acted that way in negotiations with you — my eyes can't see those depths yet. But my birds will aid us with their wings and, once we find the wild phoenix responsible, they will aid in negotiations.”</p><p>“How many do you have?” Esha asked.</p><p>“Three phoenixes who have my trust, and have strong enough wings to search the higher winds. Also two more birds who are newer to me, or weak of body, but still my kin.”</p><p>“So, they can find my knife and bring it back?”</p><p>With a rueful smile, Atarangi said, “We can hope for that. But animism is still diplomacy, Gita. You're from Tselaya: you must be aware that negotiation doesn't always go as planned.”</p><p>Esha thought as much, from her knowledge pieced together out of history and gossip and criers' messages. There had been civil war when she was too small to know it; it lasted long enough for children to grow into men. But the diplomats eventually brought peace, and guards instead of soldiers, and well water and poorly-made fences for all the children of Tselaya. Negotiation did solve problems, and solve them mostly.</p><p>All Esha could say was, “I hope it goes as smoothly as telling a phoenix to leave a yam field.”</p><p>It took a moment for Esha to notice the way Atarangi was looking at her — coolly, like across a chasm.</p><p>“There's no telling phoenixes to do anything. They're not human beings, bound by shackles.”</p><p>What an unusual thing to say, Esha thought, her eyes widening. Atarangi had a powerful love for heaven's lesser beings — like some of the goatherds and yak breeders did. Esha held onto that thought, considering Atarangi sitting peaceful here with phoenixes in her home; she had thought plenty about society's shackles, herself and there was plenty she didn't like.</p><p>“Tselaya animists,” Atarangi asked mild. “They never begin a task without ending it, is that right? They either intimidate the phoenix into leaving, or kill it like a flea?”</p><p>“That's how it's done. You don't work that way, clearly enough.”</p><p>Atarangi only smiled. “It will take me some time to make contact with the phoenix who has your knife. You may go about your business, Gita. You work for which farm? Janjuman?”</p><p>“That's right.”</p><p>“And you live in the fieldworkers' allocation?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Then let your mind rest. I will seek you out when I have news worth sharing.”</p><p>It was in the animist's hands now. Esha left Atarangi's home with a lighter yet heavier heart, and found herself she looking forward to the dust-caked simplicity of a field full of yams.</p><p> </p><p>The plants broke soil that week, reaching sprouts toward the light like green fingers. Rain was sparse, though. Farmwomen discussed the colour of the sunsets and the size of the lungta particles whipping past, and everyone agreed that it would be a slightly dry year. Esha and the others filled uncountable carts full of water and spread it into the grasping soil.</p><p>Women were pulled from the fields, assigned to tearing up sod and yankvines to take back the fallow ground — all the way to the worldedge. Esha wasn't chosen. She thanked each god by name for that.</p><p>After three days of relative peace, it was jarring to see Atarangi again. Her bristly cloak and artfully twisted hair grabbed Esha's attention by the throat — because Atarangi waited at the door of Gita's former home.</p><p>“Ah, I was early,” she told Esha. “But still, I hope I find you well, Gita.”</p><p>Esha offered namaste, hurried and distracted; in the corner of her eye, neighbours stared at the masked foreign noble standing in the middle of a sand-poor district. “Hail to you, too. Let us talk inside — ah, not this home. I don't actually live here.”</p><p>Atarangi was tactful enough not to comment on Esha's actual home. She looked curious at the shelf full of bamboo dolls, and accepted the plain cup full of low-grade tea.</p><p>“My bird made contact with the phoenix who holds your khukuri,” was her report. “First of all, we guessed correctly: our mysterious phoenix is female, and living on Millworks Plateau.”</p><p>“That high?” Millworks was a mid-caste plateau, an order of magnitude up the mountain from Yam. Getting there would take a week of travel on the spiral road — or a single kilometre climbed directly skyward. “She couldn't find anything to steal from her own plateau?”</p><p>“I can't explain that,” Atarangi said, “and the dealmaker hasn't offered any reasons for her travel. The meat of our nut is this: she feels that the Kanakisipt khukuri is rightfully hers.”</p><p>“What?! Where did she get that idea?!”</p><p>Grimacing, Atarangi turned her teacup between her smooth fingers. “You promised the wild phoenix <em>anything</em> in exchange for her help, Gita. She said that despite the difficulty speaking with you, it was made very clear that she could have anything she wanted. You didn't tell me that. Didn't you think that was an important part of the bargain?”</p><p>“She's a <em>bird </em>— I didn't think anything I told her would be more important than whether I can afford to retire.”</p><p>“You must understand: phoenixes take verbal arrangements very seriously. We have explained the problem more than once, and the dealmaker is not interested in changing the terms.”</p><p>“Your phoenix explained,” Esha corrected.</p><p>Beneath the mask, Atarangi's eyes rolled frustrated. “Fine. I accept the blame for my partner's failings. But still, the dealmaker has planted her feet firm. We asked her what she would trade in exchange for your khukuri, and she said she would only accept more of what she calls purple-wordsmithing-song flower — that means orchids, or any flower with potent speaking lungta.”</p><p>“That's not an option,” Esha blurted. Her voice was weaker than she would have liked. “I can't— I can't get more of the Kanakisipt orchid, I don't think even you would be able to get it for a price I can pay. Keep negotiating. Please.”</p><p>Her mouth twitching with held protests, Atarangi nodded.</p><p> </p><p>Two more days passed. It was nearly long enough for the yam fields to calm Esha, for the grinding of her digging spade to sand away her rough edges. Sprouts spread their heart-shaped leaves toward the holy sky. Even the evening meal was a minor joy: the cook made chapatti bread flecked with onion greens and it was a treat everyone savoured.</p><p>Esha was feeling nearly ordinary when Atarangi came calling again. She cast a sunset-long shadow on Esha's doorstep, and returned namaste with an unsettling sharpness in her hidden eyes.</p><p>“I'm sorry to say,” she said once inside. “That the discussion is over.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Your dealmaker said she will not give the khukuri back, nor trade it back for less than it's worth. My phoenix is not welcome in her territory if he speaks any more about it. That's all there is.”</p><p>Esha stopped over the tea kettle, leaves clutched in unmovable fingers. “That can't be all. It can't.” Her life had only begun climbing back upward toward something hopeful.</p><p>“I'm afraid it is.”</p><p>“Good diplomat, that's only what the thief bird told your <em>messenger</em>,” Esha said, with rising fear hot in her chest. “You have to go deal with the phoenix yourself. Catch it, strike it with a rock—“</p><p>“No,” Atarangi snapped.</p><p>“<em>I'll</em> do it! Tell me which end of Millworks to start from!”</p><p>“<em>No.”</em></p><p>Esha had more passion roaring through her but no more words, no more illusion that she was making sense because time for her own foolishness to sink in, to feel her shifting leg joints throbbing with her pulse and know that she could never manage such a trip alone. Even if she could travel to Millworks, she had no business trapping creatures there and the soldiers would handle her accordingly. “I—“ She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I just ... don't know what to do.”</p><p>She stole a glance at Atarangi. The large woman sat like a temple statue at Esha's rough-hewn table, smiling sadly. “However much the sky thunders, an unmoving stone still knows peace. Please be calm, Gita Of The Fields.” She hesitated, rolling her hands into neat fists. “There is ... one last option we can try.”</p><p>Esha swallowed, and rubbed her eyes. “Alright.”</p><p>“Might we have some tea?”</p><p>“Yes, yes.” The leaves were broken to crumbs now but that would make them steep quicker, anyway. “Go on — please.”</p><p>“Phoenixes do not like proxy discussion about a person half a world away,” Atarangi said. “It's a trait of their language, and therefore a guideline for how they see the world surrounding them. They don't always name things clearly — not in the way we think of it — and many individuals never even accept a name as theirs. “</p><p>“Can't imagine that they would,” Esha said. Names were for people, for heaven-blessed humans who could understand such significance.</p><p>“Negotiating through my kin birds can save me journeying — so it's a tool worth trying. But it makes me a distant object in a phoenix's mind, just a speck on the ground below. They respond better to diplomacy when I'm standing right before their eyes. And ideally, the wronged party is standing there with me. That means that if we both travel to the wild phoenix's home plateau, and stand within her territory to make our request, maybe she will reconsider returning your khukuri somehow.”</p><p>This was a punishment, Esha felt in her waterlogged heart, in the burning tears threatening to spill. She wasn't an old woman but she didn't have the strength to drag herself up the mountain.</p><p>“I didn't mean it,” she said quiet, “when I said I'd journey up there.”</p><p>Atarangi hummed, a flat stone of a sound.</p><p>“It's just that I can't afford a yak cart for the spiral road. A-And the time I'd need to spend away from work, and—“</p><p>“I know this must be difficult,” Atarangi said, soft as a wool blanket. “I will aid you any way a diplomat reasonably can. But the decision is yours to make.”</p><p>With a deep breath, Esha found balance. “There's no decision. I need that khukuri back. When will we leave?”</p><p>“I suggest tomorrow,” Atarangi said like an apology. “Waiting won't help.”</p><p>Esha's breath escaped in a sigh, a long deflating of air from a tired woman's body. “Yaah, I suppose. Will the property token and the phoenix's capture be payment enough for your trouble?”</p><p>“It will if you guide me along the way. You are more familiar with Tselaya Mountain than I am.”</p><p>“I'm no guide. I can't carry much — my bones ...”</p><p>“The land provides food and shelter. And so do towns.”</p><p>It was a reckless but simple plan, like seeds thrown aimless onto bare earth. Esha filled their teacups once more and murmured, “Alright.”</p><p>“I will visit your farm's owner,” Atarangi said, “and request hiring your services. Janjuman Farms will receive compensation for your absence, and you will receive a small salary for your service in locating a wild phoenix. For filing purposes, we will describe this wild phoenix as a problem bird.”</p><p>It certainly had upended Esha's life. She nodded. “Tomorrow is Shiva's Gift. My work won't be missed — yaah, but I'm sure you know that.”</p><p>“Will the clerk be present at Janjuman?”</p><p>“I'm not convinced he ever leaves.”</p><p>“Very well,” Atarangi said. “Then let us arrange some more particulars. About your legs ...”</p><p>The trip would be a collaborative effort, they decided. Atarangi would provide a supply of painkiller herbs; Esha would do the bulk of the fuel-cutting and meal preparation; both would bear the burdens of travel. One of Atarangi's phoenixes would accompany them, for negotiations and for an additional pair of eyes while on the road. The others would mind Atarangi's house, she said. And since climbing the spire passes made for faster travel than a steep-priced yak cart, they would climb.</p><p>“I haven't got a yak but I do have a cart to use,” she explained. “A travelling pack with a wheeled frame, able to carry a human being's weight in supplies. It'll spare our backs for most of the trip.”</p><p>“You've done this before,” Esha guessed.</p><p>“I don't need to tell you: I'm not from here.”</p><p>She smiled at her own soft-spoken enormity, and kept laying out terms. If all efforts turned out successfully, Atarangi would recruit the clever thief as one of her own flock; Esha would pay one property token; and they would divide between them any resources gathered while walking the wilds. The deal would then be complete; the truth of it would be shared with no one else.</p><p>With jet-black ink, Esha signed Gita's name on their agreement of slanted ethics, and Atarangi locked it away in an iron chest. All that remained was for Atarangi to formally commandeer Esha as her travelling companion. Simple business, since any one farm woman was a small request to make.</p><p>Except that Atarangi would be asking about Gita, the name of a missing dead woman. This entire bargain was based on a lie. Esha was stepping into another trap knotted by her own hands and she didn't want to face it, didn't want to see any more plans fall to tatters.</p><p>“Good diplomat,” she finally managed, while stepping out into the night. Dread made her hands shake. “About requesting my leave— Well, there may be trouble when you give my name ...”</p><p>Atarangi only smiled, a firm mercy beneath the mask. “I know who to ask for, Esha Of The Fields.”</p><p>Here it was, the lie exposed. To Atarangi's credit, she kept holding the door open.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In her bed that night, Esha stared unseeing at the ceiling. Of course a diplomat had permission to view taxation records and property documents. What a simple fact to overlook. Esha had tried to lie to someone more resourceful than herself — yet Atarangi's human smile was what stayed in her mind. Atarangi saying her true name when Gita's false-inked name was barely dry. For all their differences, the animist seemed trustworthy. Esha hoped that was true, since her hands were bound and all she could do was have faith.</p><p> </p><p>A fragment of a dream receded — something about running, needing to get somewhere and cover up the goat-hooved monstrocities where her bare feet ought to be— and she couldn't get back to sleep. She spent the time preparing travelling food. By the guttering light of a candle, Esha picked all of her garden onions and rubbed the dirt from them. She dug up the sesame plant with careful spadestrokes and settled it inside a dirt-filled sack: if she was careful, it might tolerate the travel and provide some green food. Once that was done, she filled her humble home with the scent of fresh-baked chapattis and popped maize. If nothing else, this was a good way to remember the place.</p><p>Morning was bleeding white through the chimney when Atarangi arrived. Esha hardly looked up from her work; the doll's body would hold together after one more sure knot.</p><p>“Hail,” Esha said. The gumgrass stems muffled and bittered her words. “Grant me a moment to finish this, if you would.”</p><p>“Granted.” Atarangi shifted closer, a Manyori-patterned haze in Esha's side vision. “Another one of your dolls?”</p><p>Esha tugged a leather trimming, tightening the doll's selfrope into place over her jute chaff sari. “I make them sometimes. Not always for reasons. Today, the doll will rest in my stead.”</p><p>“Ah. Is that a custom?”</p><p>She shrugged. “Grewiers make dolls on the Day of Colours, when we're children. I've just found that dolls are a good offering for any occasion. Like I'm leaving someone else here to keep watch. Not simply wandering away.”</p><p>“I am sorry about all this,” Atarangi said. “My birds and I have managed smaller bargains over distances ...”</p><p>“It can't be helped. It's my own fault. One more moment, please.”</p><p>The doll was done, Esha realized after a moment of fussing with its gum-leaf skirt. She had nothing to do but place it and carry on with her own life. She turned away from Atarangi, the enormous presence in her home, and stood the doll on her clay-brick prayer stand. Beside it, Esha lit a juniper twig until it flared and smoldered.</p><p>Closing her eyes, immersing in her own voice, Esha hummed the hymn of invitation. Everyone knew this song, no matter their caste. She asked the gods to be present here, to listen to her request and grant her a small forgiveness. Rising and falling notes came from deep within her, from the unnamed place of memories that didn't hurt.</p><p>When she opened her eyes again, the doll still laid there staring with ink-dot eyes, silent as the earth that made up the prayer stand, humble as the lashed bamboo walls. The air weighed with divinity. Glancing to Atarangi — who watched, intent — Esha said, “I've worked on holy days before. I imagine it's one of the minor sins.”</p><p>“Seems like a small tool to borrow,” Atarangi agreed.</p><p>Esha stood there still, balanced on her own aching joints, bound by the gravity of her staring doll.</p><p>“We'll spend a few days climbing. Few more to come back.” Esha grimaced; it had been years since she used her selfrope to haul herself between plateaus and she didn't recall liking the trip. “How long will it be to negotiate with the thief? She'll either drive us off immediately or agree to haggle, is that right?”</p><p>“Likely,” Atarangi said, turning her empty palms skyward. “But I can't promise anything but to try.”</p><p>“That's plenty,” Esha said immediately. She watched the juniper's flame smoulder and dwindle. “Alright. Let us go.”</p><p>There outside the door was Atarangi's phoenix. It was her favourite partner bird, she said, the one she placed most confidence in. Esha was reasonably sure he was the tolerant male who had unknotted the door for her, the one with red streaks in his crests that Esha was starting to recognize. He sat on a canvas pack nearly the size of another person: it was fitted on a metal frame, with four spoked wheels each the measure of Esha's forearm.</p><p>“Tell the dealmaker that we're travelling to meet her,” Atarangi told the bird, with herbs rustling in her voice. “Ask her not to destroy the flower-stone; we'll bring better trades. Something more valuable to her than a single song-flower.”</p><p>That wasn't anywhere near the truth. Esha's packed savings chest and trade goods — the entirety of her worldly possessions — couldn't buy back the khukuri, never mind buy anything better.</p><p>But the phoenix creaked agreeably, and took flight. He circled upward, sending gusts of lungta spinning in his wake, before soaring away toward the higher plateaus.</p><p>Janjuman's clerk went tight-mouthed at Atarangi's suggestion, but he couldn't refuse a diplomat's slightly superior rank. Watching him sign and seal the papers was like a warm meal in Esha's belly.</p><p>And once the deal was done, Esha followed Atarangi out of the clerk's office and off Janjuman Farms. She pulled her wheeled pack by a canvas strap; Esha's pack and satchel felt weightier by the moment.</p><p>The town passed them by, with fewer stares than before. Flags flapped in the day's breeze; a goatherd led some patchy-furred tahr goats to market; people carried celebration kites and grinned to one another.</p><p>Esha grabbed glances at the familiar patterns of windows and roofs, to tamp them sure into her memory before she left this plain expanse she called home. If she was fortunate, she would return. But if her bones failed her, maybe it would be best if she didn't.</p><p>They walked on; Esha watched Atarangi's bristled cloak bounce with her every sure stride. The Farback passed them by and the main road rambled around ragged stands of bamboo. Men cut bamboo, their khukuris thunking into the fibrous stalks. Once they were past the coppices of bamboo stumps, the chopping sounds faded behind them, Atarangi flicked a glance back over her shoulder — like Esha might escape into the wilderness unless watched.</p><p>“Come here, my business partner. Walk beside me if we're to be allies.”</p><p>Her back was unreadable. Esha was sworn into a leave of absence, trapped in a net of her own sins, and so sick of lying that she wanted to spit. It was a chafing relief to hold her tongue silent and take one step after another, to stand at Atarangi's side. Like yaks yoked together, they began awkwardly to walk again.</p><p>“So,” Atarangi asked, “Should I speak to you as Gita, or Esha?”</p><p>“Esha.” Speaking her own name was a pleasant sting of truth, like a meal spiced with too much cayenne.</p><p>“Esha, then. Why are you using two names? Just to match the property tokens?”</p><p>“I ... It's a story full of troubles.”</p><p>“Rocks hear all the waves in the ocean.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Atarangi slid a glance to her. “I'm a rock. I have time to listen.”</p><p>“I ... Gita is gone. So I've been using her name as mine sometimes. Her property, too — but you know that, I suppose.”</p><p>“That will get you demerits if you tell the wrong person,” Atarangi said. It hung prickling, like a question.</p><p>Esha nodded, and hummed flat answer. “Will you be reporting me?”</p><p>“Why would I? I use two names, as well.”</p><p>The two of them were equals, in a way — using names like false flags, and slinking about in the shadows. Atarangi just managed to have a way of dignity about her. Esha mulled that truth in her mouth; they walked steady and the bamboo thinned; the next block of farmers' square-hewn homes came rising out of the grass and the dust.</p><p>“You are registered with the Empire as Atarangi,” Esha asked under her breath, “are you not?”</p><p>She didn't look up but she felt Atarangi's brown-gold eyes on her, lancing through the headwraps.</p><p>“That is right. Atarangi Te Waaka, gifted with the diplomat caste. Birdnose is a name no bureaucrat knows.”</p><p>“I won't be telling it to them. You need not worry about that.”</p><p>Wind stirred light between them. Gwaras tumbled in the street dust, and festival music drifted from the distant well plateau, and at Esha's elbow, Atarangi the high-ranked was smiling her simple smile.</p><p>“I'm pleased to hear that, Esha.”</p><p>Wind carried the scent of popped maize and spices, and the robust sound of people in the town square. Shiva's Gift revellers parted around Atarangi and Esha, glancing curious at the wheeled cart and the animist's mask and carrying on, unworried. Field sisters saw Esha across the busy street — and meeting their eyes made Esha freeze like a hunted hare — but then the sisters saw the diplomat Esha walked with and they only gestured namaste, that simple well-wish.</p><p>Atarangi and Esha kept on down the road, and the festival petered away behind them, the drum-beaten songs fading into the wind. The only rhythm was their two sets of footsteps on the worn dirt, and the grinding cart wheels, and the wind swirling silvery-red lungta flecks to earth.</p><p>Atarangi's phoenix returned after half an hour's walking. It swooped down to Atarangi's offered arm and landed light as a thrown rag, then hopped onto her shoulder and settled. From open beak and working tongue, he croaked a long tirade that Atarangi listened to, her head tipped thoughtful.</p><p>“The dealmaker bird has been notified that we're coming to negotiate,” Atarangi finally said. “She will tolerate our presence, but only in specific areas of her territory.”</p><p>“Lot of nerve she has,” Esha muttered. “Making conditions when she's the thief.”</p><p>She regretted saying it, as Atarangi turned a look of stony pressure toward her. The tame phoenix, mirrored the motion but all Esha saw was her newest friend gathering disapproving words.</p><p>“I know this has caused you difficulty, Esha Of The Fields,” Atarangi said in crisp syllables. “But I must ask you to be civil.”</p><p>“I'm sorry,” Esha said. She found that she meant it, moreso when she looked at Atarangi's expression half visible under the mask. “I shouldn't be disrespecting your birds. It's only that the— the <em>wild</em> phoenix could have had anything else. Some other khukuri, or ... plant food, I don't know.”</p><p>The wind blew between them, while their footsteps crunched onward and regret soaked into Esha's heart. A yak-drawn cart passed them by on the road; the driver stared bowl-eyed at Atarangi and the phoenix settled peacefully on her shoulders. The cart's dust settled and waxwings trilled in the roadside pines.</p><p>“Life washes all manner of things onto the shore,” Atarangi finally said. She sounded calm now, like quoting someone's wise teachings. “All I ask is that you open your thoughts a little, Esha.”</p><p>“Open my ...?”</p><p>“Just try to understand. I'll need to sort out your arrangement from a clumped mess of misunderstandings and phoenix customs — and phoenixes <em>do</em> have customs, just like you do. So I must ask you to try.”</p><p>It was an absurd thought, that a phoenix had the same standing as Esha. She hadn't fallen that far. She was a <em>person</em>, a child of heaven even if heaven didn't want her back.</p><p>“I can try,” Esha pushed from her mouth. She did have to admit, in the bitterest corners of herself, that Atarangi's phoenix had opened a door for her and invited her inside. That was more than any flower-crowned noble had offered her lately.</p><p>A shadow of Atarangi's smile returned as she said, “Good.” She turned her gaze back to the road ahead.</p><p>Her phoenix still watched Esha though, with his head canted and eyes intent. Like a child peering at a stranger. Esha tried deciding whether it was unsettling or charming and couldn't choose.</p><p>“So, she asked, “does this bird have a name?”</p><p>“He does. Why do you ask?”</p><p>“If he's going to be staring at me for this entire trip, I'd like to know what to call him.” Esha definitely couldn't call him <em>vermin</em> now.</p><p>“I call him kin,” Atarangi answered. It was plainly a broken-off crumb of the entire answer. “You might earn his friendship. Then you may know his name.”</p><p>“Ah,” Esha ventured, “it's a custom?”</p><p>“That's right.”</p><p>“I can live with that.”</p><p>They kept on as the sun reached its zenith. They only had half of Yam Plateau to cross to get to a set of climbing spires: to Esha, the walk was brief and yet endless.</p><p>Coming here was inevitable. In recent years, Esha had avoided consideration of retirement farms but also wordlessly hoped for a good one. Maybe one of Maize Plateau's renowned retirement farms, the free-roaming kind where a wretched woman could grow her hooves under treeshade. Esha had never been so ambitious, though, that she imagined hiring a cart to get there. She knew she would climb the spires herself: the dream had involved Gita travelling with her. One last secret plan. The plan was unfolding, just not nearly the way Esha had imagined.</p><p>They reached a Sky Thread, one of the rivers formed of pure meltwater from Tselaya's peak. This one was lined with people scrubbing clothing in soap-frothed buckets, pouring filmy water out onto the ground and stooping for more clean water. Pants and saris hung from rows of bamboo drying racks, like house flags but far more colourful.</p><p>Esha and Atarangi kept on and soon came to one Yam Plateau's camp sites. This site straddled water divergent from the Sky Thread — a trickle of water that people flattered by calling it a stream, but it ran clear and had a well-used fire pit close enough for convenience. A clay statue of mother goddess Parvati sat there as a beacon to travellers, her back to the mountain and her hands offering namaste to all who passed by.</p><p>“I'd like to take some tea before we climb,” Atarangi said, drifting toward the fire pit. “And a meal.”</p><p>“That's fine.”</p><p>“Oh, good — I don't know how you Grewians manage on just two meals each day.” She let go of her cart strap, with her phoenix clinging to his tilting perch and fluttering like protest. “I feel like an empty sack if I go all day without something more than tea.”</p><p>“I thought the small foods in your home were for your birds. Do you shovel them into your mouth when no one is watching?”</p><p>Atarangi laughed, an honest sound like thunder. “They're for diplomacy, fieldwoman!”</p><p>Esha managed to smother her grin until she turned away, to check the tiny shed beside Parvati. It was half filled with ragged-split bamboo sticks.</p><p>“Fuel in these travellers' sheds is meant for anyone passing through,” she said, taking an armload, “so we're welcome to what's here. Have you travelled by foot on this plateau?”</p><p>“Not this high up the mountain,” Atarangi said, “no. You are fortunate to have this much wild land. Betel Plateau is more tightly packed than this.”</p><p>“We do have plenty of free-growing bamboo,” Esha admitted. “The Empire hasn't taxed that yet. And these rest sites are open for everyone's use. We'll find more like this, at least as far as Maize, maybe the lower end of Rice. Beyond that, I can't say.” Esha remembered nothing about the mid-peak plateaus, just that she had sat in a cart while being escorted away from them.</p><p>Atarangi hummed. “We'll manage, I'm sure. My friend?”</p><p>Esha turned, startled — to see Atarangi speaking to her attention-taut phoenix.</p><p>“Some tinder, please.”</p><p>With a creaking answer, the bird flapped away. Foolish of Esha to think that Atarangi was talking to her. She just missed having a sister-friend to talk to, she supposed. Maybe the journey wouldn't be so bad.</p><p>By the time Esha split bamboo into kindling, the phoenix returned with his beak packed full of withered pine needles.</p><p>“He'll look after it,” Atarangi offered. And so Esha put down the kindling and watched the phoenix work — arranging a tent of sticks around his gathered tinder, and picking open two knots in his stringfeathers to release his iron and pyrite, and proceeding to strike sparks.</p><p>For all the terror it stirred up in Esha's farming mind, the technique certainly was arresting to watch. The bird held the glittering pyrite in his beak, and the iron between his talons; a liquid snap of his long neck brought the two together. Into the fire pit sprayed hot sparks, once and twice and again until smoke began twining out of the tinder. A flame needled up and the phoenix immediately hopped away to set his striking tools on bare ground, in plain sight. And then, stick by stick, he dropped bamboo fuel carefully onto the growing flames.</p><p>It was exactly the way a human being would strike up a fire. The phoenix had the same intent in his eyes, the same practiced sureness in his every movement. Esha had never noticed before; she had always just feared for the yam plants.</p><p>Gradually, Esha noticed Atarangi — watching her, smiling.</p><p>“I'm going to cut more fuel,” Esha hurried to say. “Call me when the meal is ready, if you would?”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>The camp site was ringed with bamboo coppices, tiered with old stumps and green growth. Esha used her broken khukuri blade and a rock to hammer stalks down and she returned as Atarangi was drawing breath to call out.</p><p>“If you cut any bamboo here,” Esha told her, while holding a hot bowl, “be careful which stalks you cut. Someone here before us found a hollowheart — so there might well be more.”</p><p>“The ... bad luck bamboo?” Atarangi ventured.</p><p>“That's right. Someone cut into one over there and flagged it for everyone else's safety, with a marked cloth.” In honesty with herself, Esha had admired the jute rag with <em>hollow</em> written on it in gobbed pine pitch, tied around a gouged bamboo stalk. Whoever left that warning had been lucky as well as resourceful; the serpents must not have noticed that cut on their bamboo.</p><p>“Truthfully,” Esha added, “we should all flag hollowhearts when we find them. Everyone would be safer.”</p><p>With a toneless hum, Atarangi stirred her steaming rice and onion with a careful finger. Beside her, the phoenix did the same with his beak. “I've never understood why Tselayans fear hollow bamboo. Has anyone really vanished after cutting one?”</p><p>“The arbiters say it's true. They've been wrong before, but ...” Esha waved a rice-sticky hand. “One of my fieldfellows disappeared some years ago when she was out cutting fuel. There was no trace of her at all, so it must have been a serpent. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe it was a tiger, or some cutthroats. All we know is that there hasn't been trace of her since.”</p><p>“My apologies,” Atarangi murmured.</p><p>“Thanks. I hardly knew her, though.” Esha chewed, and swallowed. “It happens to fieldworkers. We disappear, and someone takes our place, and life keeps on.”</p><p>Atarangi had comments to make, judging by her yearning frown. She stirred more steam out of her meal and kept eating, and put another dollop of rice in the phoenix's bowl.</p><p>“People disappear and life moves on,” she finally said. “That's why you're using Gita's life as yours.”</p><p>“That's right.”</p><p>“This mountain ...” Atarangi shook her head, and asked, “If we should meet guards, are you going by Esha or Gita?”</p><p>It was a decision Esha did need to make. She sighed. “I hope no one needs to know. But I'll be Gita.”</p><p>“To everyone, or only human beings?”</p><p>The question was a cold blast of wind, too surprising to understand. “My name to everyone? What?”</p><p>“Well, give this phoenix some recognition: he knows that I'm Birdnose or Atarangi, depending on what I'm doing.”</p><p>The phoenix watched them in this moment, bright-eyed. He was either trained to do long chains of tricks or he was truly a comprehending creature. Which meant Esha and Atarangi were not alone — and they hadn't been alone at any point a phoenix was present, which was as mesmerizing and terrifying as watching the bird work flint and steel.</p><p>Atarangi stood and removed the rice pot from the coals. “I'd like to be just Atarangi,” she added, quiet. “I think I owe you a weight of secrets, Esha Of The Fields, since I searched out your records. So I'll tell you this: Birdnose is just who the people of Tselaya Mountain would like me to be.”</p><p>“A blackmark herb dealer?”</p><p>“An owner of a human face.” Smile splitting into a grin, Atarangi turned firelight eyes to Esha. “You didn't suspect anything, did you? Looking on me as Birdnose?”</p><p>Nightmares tumbled through Esha's mind, all the stories ever whispered about demons taking human faces for their own. Nonsense, she scolded herself. “Ah. Didn't suspect what?”</p><p>“That the human nose wasn't mine. Here, I'll show you.” After a moment unbuttoning her pack flap and digging under cloth assortments, Atarangi pulled a limp, brown thing from her supplies. It looked like the brow, nose and cheekbones of a human face — a face Esha had seen before.</p><p>“Wh-What ...?” She stared riveted, her blood chilling.</p><p>“It's made of rubber tree sap, heated and set into shape.”</p><p>“Another <em>face?!”</em> Esha couldn't rip her eyes away from the translucent thing in the firelight, much as she wanted to.</p><p>“My trait shows on my face,” Atarangi said. “Just the hooked tip of my beak. I'm going to become a sea eagle. The ones from my home. I watched them diving for fish when I was small — magnificent creatures.”</p><p>Her mind numb, Esha nodded.</p><p>It wasn't convincing; Atarangi smiled small and embarrassed. “No one minded the sight of my beak in Manyori lands. But on Tselaya, there are rules to follow.”</p><p>“I thought folk called you Birdnose because of the ... because of that other face's shape.”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“Well, the big nose.” Esha waved toward the tree-sap mask dangling from Atarangi's hand, like her hands might explain. “Sticking out and coming to a point like that ... It's like a jungle fowl's beak.”</p><p>Turning the mask to scrutinize her own face, Atarangi said, “Oh. It somewhat does! I picked the name for my own bird nose, since no one can see it. It would upset folk, wouldn't it?”</p><p>“Traits showing on your face? Very much so.” Esha could only recall one Grewier wearing a mask, and that was a frail old man. He was fortunate to have reached such an age in his human body — but what a price he paid, wearing heaped cloaks and wraps, walking the street in a silent storm of pitying glances.</p><p>Atarangi rotated her bowl in her fingers. “That's the only reason I wear this,” and she pointed to her mask, “is to be polite company for the people of this empire. And Birdnose is because of your senseless laws against herb use.”</p><p>“Speak more truth,” Esha said, “I'll keep agreeing.”</p><p>“Gladly.” Atarangi smiled, crooked and wry. “I think the burden of secrets is even now — although a diplomat and a farmer should never speak so frankly with each other. That's how Tselayans do things, is it not?”</p><p>“We've broken a hundred rules already, why not one more?” Esha blew out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. “Gods help me, though, I've never heard so much raw honesty at once. Is this always how you speak?”</p><p>“Oh, not at all,” Atarangi replied. “I've just been bottling my frustrations with your rules and your ways. I hope I'm not troubling you.”</p><p>“I suppose not.” Esha herself had thought the caste divisions unfair, thought it small and fearful like a passing guard might demand to see the contents of her mind. “But the ways of Tselaya are yours too, if you've got a caste.”</p><p>“It's permission to work my craft. I'm simply not sure I can accept everything this rank tells me.” Taking her caste sigil between her fingers, Atarangi turned it on its brass pin. “Nets can bind a creature, but they can't take the ocean from its heart.”</p><p>The words were a jumble. But somewhere, maybe in her own heart, Esha felt like she understood.</p><p>“I shouldn't speak of this,” Atarangi went on, “even in confidence. Getting instated to this rank isn't something to question. It's just that dignity should be for all. A food producer like you would be treated better in my society.”</p><p>“Really? As well as your bird?”</p><p>“Better, even,“ Atarangi said, laughing. She took a heaping bite of her meal — just as the phoenix hopped closer to her and made a crooning noise.</p><p>“Truly?” Atarangi asked him.</p><p>More croaking and chirping. The phoenix's crests worked, almost like he was gesturing.</p><p>“You can if you want to,” Atarangi said. “We'll see.”</p><p>With a last rasping sound, the bird strutted around the fire pit — toward Esha. He stopped by the piled fire fuel, eyeing it, considering. Just as Esha feared him reaching for his tail-held iron and pyrite, he chose a bamboo stick and plucked a thumb-sized sliver from it. And then he approached Esha, coming near enough to see the ribs of his feathers and the living wetness in his eyes.</p><p>Esha wanted to move but she sat, politely, clutching her tea cup like a life rope as the phoenix laid down the sliver of wood beside her bent knee. Then the bird straightened, and stared.</p><p>“He's giving you fuel for a fire,” Atarangi said. “It's a friendship gesture.”</p><p>“... Are you joking?”</p><p>“Not at all. He's not, either.”</p><p>What an eerie thought, like a waking dream — that a field-destroying bird had any idea what friendship was, and that Atarangi would talk about it like the thought was as plain as potatoes. The phoenix kept staring at her.</p><p>“Should I,” Esha asked, “take it?”</p><p>“You said you need more friends, don't you?”</p><p>Esha pushed her hovering hand toward the sliver; her fingers were thick and numb. “I think what I said was that I don't need more enemies.”</p><p>“Just pick it up and thank him. Why throw a gift away?”</p><p>Atarangi was damnably right. Maybe befriending an animal wouldn't be the worst decision ever made by Esha Of The Fields, long since reduced to lying and thieving. She took the sliver from the leaf-pillowed ground, and pushed her gaze toward the phoenix. She couldn't meet its prying eyes. Maybe its ruff of chest feathers would be enough.</p><p>“Thank you,” Esha mumbled.</p><p>He chirped — a clear and lilting song, nothing like the phoenixes Esha had ever heard before. And with that, he galloped back to Atarangi and sat bundled against her side, feathers puffed and crests low. A little like a child — a boy child smitten with a pretty woman, Esha couldn't help thinking.</p><p>“There. You've brightened his sky,” Atarangi said warm. She turned her attention to draining her tea cup.</p><p>Bemusement rose warm in Esha and she smiled herself, raising tea to her mouth. “If it's that easy to please him, he's welcome to it.”</p><p> </p><p>They didn't linger long, only enough for Atarangi to wipe sand in her cookpots and Esha to stub out the half-burned fuel for the next travellers' use. With the wheeled cart loaded again, the group of them — Esha, good Atarangi and the companion presence of the phoenix — kept walking. After more bamboo stands, and a reeking pig farm, and a gumgrass field alive with finches, they reached the mountain's face. Climbing spires led up the cliffside, metal poles bristling from the rock like hair from a boar's nape.</p><p>A few hundred meters to their left, a curtain of shadow dropped down from Maize Plateau, along with the cable rig for low-caste cargo. To the far-off right, where Yam Plateau narrowed and became the spiral road, earthquake repairs were under way. The guards' station was crowded with metal and stoneworkers, their materials heaped near the worldedge and their scaffolds lowering workers over the road's side. Some gathered workers parted so a carriage could squeeze through, a wood-coloured bulk drawn by pure white yaks that must have cost a fortune to breed.</p><p>“Here's one small blessing the gods spat onto us,” Esha told Atarangi. “We don't need to pass through that checkpoint.”</p><p>“Mm, I'll be thankful for that. They're trouble enough.”</p><p>They approached Maize Plateau's shadow and checked the pulley rig. The mechanism moved with just enough resistance to be useful and the cables were in good condition for an Empire-funded piece of equipment, showing only a few pinpricks of rust and one bent spot in the looped length. Together, Esha and Atarangi loaded their supplies into the basket and pulleyed it skyward.</p><p>“Bring it back down,” Esha said after they hooked on stone counterweights. “Halfway between plateaus is the least tempting for thieves, since it'll take time to retrieve from either direction. Can't just snatch it and run.”</p><p>“Ah,” Atarangi said, smirking. “That's clever.”</p><p>“It's one of many tricks. Have you climbed spires before, or only travelled by carriage?”</p><p>“I've taken the spires before, I'll manage. Your knees ...?”</p><p>Sore though they were, Esha waved the idea away. “It won't be the first day I've put up with them.”</p><p>They unwound selfropes. Atarangi paused to tie her walking staff to her pack, and to give a few calm words to her phoenix. And then she and Esha threw selfropes over climbing spires, and they began working upward, step by rope-guarded step.</p><p>Wind pried into Esha's clothes as they climbed, more insistent than she remembered. The effort burned in her arms but gave her her knees sweet moments of relief. She imagined that the phoenix would fly ahead free but he only fluttered upward one spire at a time, meticulously following Atarangi's climbing pace. Every few moments, scaly feet clattered on the ridged iron and his gaze fixed again on Atarangi, except for the rare moments he watched Esha.</p><p>For a moment, Esha wondered if the phoenix could think — and comprehend the spiritual pinnings of life, like a person. He might be watching the humans gripping their selfropes, thinking that they might fall and be no more.</p><p>Esha walled the wingbeats and claw clattering out of her mind, to focus on her footing.</p><p>The spire pass veered over toward a toehold plateau after forty meters. This plateau was large enough hold two or three farming shacks, but no one would live on such a small, wind-gripped crumb of land. There was only some juniper and gumgrass here, huddled against the cliffside and stamped flat where travellers passed through.</p><p>The day was still long, the sun robust. Esha and Atarangi gathered their selfropes into their laps and ate on-the-run foods — Esha her popped maize, and Atarangi some pieces of dry-frizzled leaf that Esha couldn't identify.</p><p>Atarangi shared her food with the phoenix, as was their way. But the moment Esha dropped a maize kernel, the phoenix snapped to attention.</p><p>“Now you'd like maize, too?” Atarangi smiled wry, realizing some tiny fraction of how spoiled her bird was. “Ask Esha nicely, then.”</p><p>The phoenix shuffled sidelong toward her, looking again like a shy child. He croaked — but not like any phoenix cry Esha had ever heard in all her years. Atarangi's bird rasped out sounds that didn't sound meant for a phoenix at all, some mimickry Esha felt she was supposed to recognise. She put it from her mind immediately and flicked the dropped maize kernel away from her, for the phoenix to snatch up from the dirt.</p><p>“Thank her, too,” Atarangi said.</p><p>The maize gulped whole, the bird looked straight at Esha and dipped his head. Nearly like a gracious bow, near enough to surprise Esha into something like delight.</p><p>“He knows plenty of tricks,” she commented.</p><p>“He's been my partner for eight years. He's figured his way around humans in such—“</p><p>She stopped, her face wary. Esha felt a matching portent in the ground her rump rested on.</p><p>“Did you feel that?” Atarangi asked.</p><p>“I did. An aftershock ...?”</p><p>The phoenix cackled urgent at Atarangi.</p><p>“The lines are moving, he says. Maybe lines of phoenix territory, maybe something else — I can't say, but moving lines sometimes means an earthquake is on the way.”</p><p>“He can predict earth movement? How often is he right?”</p><p>“I've never counted. Perhaps two in three times? If I knew the bricks and beams of his talents, I might understand them better. It's a sense in his head, I know that much.” Atarangi waved a spread hand over her face, encompassing eyes, ears and all else. “Every phoenix I've ever met hates lodestones, so I think they wield a similar type of earth magic. Similar enough to clash.”</p><p>That was a far broader answer than Esha had expected. “You ... You give your bird a lot of thought.”</p><p>“You're going to find that there's much to think about.”</p><p>That put a speck of terror into Esha, drifting through her blood while Atarangi smiled and gave her bird more kudzu. Atarangi spoke like she knew Esha's reasons for guilt — but she couldn't know everything Esha had salted away in her head. Maybe Esha was showing a reaction on her human face when she looked at the companion phoenix and thought of others past, phoenixes vanishing through trees and over cliffsides. Maybe those things just curdled when they met the memory of Atarangi's bird offering Esha a sliver of friendship.</p><p>“You,” Esha tried, “said there might be an earthquake. How long do we have?”</p><p>“That, I can't say. We should keep on.”</p><p>They stepped back onto the spire pass and kept climbing, kept throwing their selfropes upward. There was more wind and more of the phoenix's staring as evening fell golden on the cliff face. An hour later, they heaved themselves up over the plateau's edge, grasping the spires that rounded the travel-worn curve like wheel spokes. Together — gripping the pulley cable with clumsy, overlapping hands not used to each other — Esha and Atarangi drew their supplies up and hauled the wheeled pack up onto Maize Plateau.</p><p>They sat, Atarangi catching their breath, Esha merely waiting for the fatigue to drain from her limbs. The phoenix watched them but with divided attention: the pulley drew his attention and he paced closer to peer at the gearworks.</p><p>Her breath returned, Atarangi lifted her gaze to the sky. “I don't think we have enough daylight to climb another spire pass.”</p><p>“No, no,” Esha said. “It'd be a bad idea, regardless — you're not from Tselaya. You'll fall ill if you climb too quickly.”</p><p>“Truly?”</p><p>“It's been proven by hundreds of newcomers.”</p><p>A pause hung while Atarangi thought on that. “Is that why the carts travel so slowly?”</p><p>“I don't know. Likely.” That, and Tselaya nobles getting queasy when they moved quicker than a stroll.</p><p>“It's a trouble for humans,” Atarangi supposed, “not for birds.”</p><p>“We are fortunate to have your bird checking ahead. About that — there'll be a rest site around half a kilometre from here, if my memory is to be trusted. Can your bird look for it? That's something he can understand ...?”</p><p>It was indeed something the bird understood. Once Atarangi distracted the phoenix from his gear-prodding and asked him to search the pine forest, he circled high over the campsite like a kite and he searched with his keen bird eyes. Dogs and yaks couldn't do that. Esha was beginning to understand why some went to the trouble of keeping a phoenix.</p><p>She didn't like the sensation, but she was beginning to understand much broader facets than that.</p><p>This campsite was well used, with bamboo staggered like staircases from all the fuel cuttings. Together, Esha and Atarangi cut bamboo into fuel sticks, discussing in loose <em>maybe</em>s how much they would keep or sell. If they worked enough, their trip could pay its own wages.</p><p>In the fading daylight, under leaves' shadows, Esha grilled bamboo shoots on smoky coals. Atarangi sat with some of the fuel sticks in her lap, scraping something from it with the tip of her dagger; Esha couldn't discern what the crumbs were but the phoenix nibbled some from Atarangi's offering fingertips.</p><p>“So,” Esha asked, halting, “you said the bamboo sliver was actually offered friendship. What does friendship mean to a phoenix?”</p><p>Atarangi eyed her. “What do you suppose it means?”</p><p>Another answer that wasn't an answer: Esha stifled most of her sigh. “I'd ... guess that it's the same thing friendship means to any animal. Food, and safety from hunting beasts, and wearing away their fear of human presence. But there's more to it than that, isn't there, good diplomat?”</p><p>The smile Atarangi wore was full of secrets, and spreading like satisfaction. Esha was beginning to grasp the face underneath, the shape of the bones under the mask.</p><p>“You know a handful about diplomacy, Esha. Think of Tselaya's history. Many human tribes lived here and bore arms against each other, until they realized that their needs weren't so different. They used their breath-of-life to translate each other's tongues, and through that they learned to truly speak to each other. Like plant roots crumbling a stubborn rock, people are learning to understand. That fact has allowed Tselaya Mountain to lay down its weapons — for most of the castes, that is.”</p><p>Esha held her tongue. She hackled at the sight of soldier caste but she had to admit that the guard caste's polearms, bows and fine-tooled khukuris were mostly for show; for better or worse, everyone worked together under the Empire since the Accords were struck. Esha and other Grewians worked in unity with Sherbu, Gwung and plenty more of Tselaya's children. Humans were able to do that, to look at a stranger's face and learn that they were a new ally.</p><p>“I'm sure I see where you're going,” Esha said. “Speaking lungta works on animals as well as humans, it's the same breath-of-life. But Atarangi, I hope you're not going to tell me phoenixes are thinking beings. They're not people, they're—“ Esha finally spat out the truth lodged in her throat: “They don't have souls. How could they?”</p><p>The phoenix watched her, intent. Maybe wondering the same — <em>how could I?</em> — because he swivelled his curious gaze to Atarangi while she gathered her thoughts.</p><p>“How can a mere seed grow into a tree? There can't be enough wood and sap inside such a tiny hull.”</p><p>Esha opened her mouth, and closed it again. More truths were sticking in her throat.</p><p>Atarangi lifted her pale-palmed hands. “I haven't discussed this with many Tselayan folk. You've seen too many crops set ablaze by phoenixes, I suppose. Or imagined phoenixes coveting every garden sprout, until you would swear such greed to be true. But you've been company to my birds.”</p><p>Esha stared at her bowl heaped full of grilled bamboo. “More company than a turd, I suppose,” she muttered.</p><p>After a stunned instant, Atarangi stumbled into a laugh. “Most people are, I'd say. Just keep trying, good fieldwoman.”</p><p>Phoenixes stole seeds, and burned swaths of fields to the ground. Phoenixes cursed Esha's every effort. But Atarangi's bird had opened a door latch solely because Esha Of The Fields wanted inside.</p><p>Esha set her rusty body down in her makeshift bed: a mound of dry bamboo leaves, some blankets and a tarpaulin for a tent. Her joints complained in new voices after the day's travel — but her head full of thoughts was louder by far.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wind chattered all night through the pine needles. Esha didn’t usually sleep on such a shoddy excuse for a bed, or keep her headwraps on all night like armour.</p><p>She hefted herself up at first light and rubbed the sore clumps from her neck muscles. When her wish for buttered tea grew strong enough, she crept out into the dim-lit world and relit the fire with her well-worn flint and steel — under the phoenix's watchful eye.</p><p>He sat quietly enough to overlook. Perched like a pile of scrubbing rags on the ridgepole of Atarangi's tent, watching Esha with candle-flame eyes. Between strikes of the flint, Esha glanced to the bird: he flexed his crests, and chirped a melody.</p><p>“Hail to you,” she mumbled.</p><p>She hadn't intended to speak but there it was, Esha's own voice in the still air. Turning back to her firestarters, she put new strength into the striking.</p><p>The bird hopped to the ground. Step by bobbing step, he came to the fireside and shook his feathers out. At least, Esha supposed, he didn't seem offended from the claim that he lacked a soul.</p><p>Fire devoured the bamboo and the tea water sat unboiling. Esha scratched her itchy leg, watched Atarangi's tent for movement, watched the phoenix for a token instant and took the chance of rolling up her pant leg. In the thickening hair on her ankle sat her itch — a fat, greasy tick. As much of a blood thief as the tax collector, but at least this one was quick to deal with. Esha crushed the tick's head between her nails and cocked her arm to throw it into the fire.</p><p>But she didn't throw. Because the phoenix still watched her, the trained, helpful phoenix that wasn't acting like a vermin at all. He had even made the gestures of a potential friend.</p><p>“Are you hungry?” Esha asked. Phoenixes ate bugs, she felt two-thirds sure. She opened her hand to show the foul morsel.</p><p>The bird's crests flicked upward as he stood, and strutted two steps closer. Talking to the bird didn't feel nearly as foolish as Esha expected, not when he responded so honestly.</p><p>“Here,” she said, and tossed the tick onto the leafy earth.</p><p>Crests still working, the phoenix came closer, and inspected the tick, and took it between the points of his beak. At least Esha's stolen blood would do some good.</p><p>With that taken care of and the tea water still heating, she opened her satchel for a pocket mirror. She needed to be sure her headwrap was tied tight and decent before Atarangi bothered to rise.</p><p>Her little hand mirror was old and worn, its tin too scratched to show more than Esha's own face — but that was all she wanted to see. She prodded the hair follicles welling within her forehead. She pinched the base of one goat ear and felt a sting; she counted white hairs; she adjusted the layers of the headwrap to hide it all.</p><p>Wings rushed beside her. When Esha turned, she found the phoenix an arm's length away. He tipped his head, nearly asking a question.</p><p>Esha froze, her throat bound. She was near enough to see the bristly feathers around his nostrils, and his beak like a pickaxe, and the black depth of his considering eyes.</p><p>Then the phoenix broke the gaze, grabbing one of his stringfeathers and plucking at a knot.</p><p>Esha dreaded to see the contents and she couldn't have said why -- but the phoenix produced a fragment of familiar brownness, and laid it on the ground between them. It was a piece of roofing shingle. A finger-sized sliver, steam-bent so it would fit tight around a ridgepole, varnished on one flat face.</p><p>“You took that off someone’s house, I suppose? Their roof is going to leak.”</p><p>Creaking in its throat, the phoenix bent toward the shingle fragment — and nudged it closer to Esha. He stretched tall and opened his wings, two cascading fans of feathers that Esha had to admit were beautiful in the dawn light, while he sang an iron-voiced song that was actually nearly pleasant. All of it was a nonsensical show to make over a scrap of bamboo.</p><p>Maybe, Esha guessed, the shingle fragment was supposed to be payment for the tick breakfast. But when she reached for the tile piece, the phoenix snatched it immediately back and wound his stringfeather around it. This was no human bargain, and Esha couldn't decode it: she hadn't taken speaking herbs, or even her morning tea.</p><p>“I don't know,” Esha sighed. “Come on. Let’s just wake your master.”</p><p>She was halfway to Atarangi's tent when the phoenix darted ahead. It was just as well, Esha supposed, watching him slip his head under the tent flaps: she didn't know Atarangi well enough to risk seeing her unclothed.</p><p>Atarangi grumbled while she woke. She spoke a low current of Manyori; her phoenix chirped and trilled and croaked. Esha dearly wanted to know what the sounds all meant but when Atarangi emerged from her tent, she couldn't manage to say anything but <em>good morning</em>.</p><p>“We're visiting the market before we ascend, then?” Esha did ask over breakfast millet. “I'd rather sell this fuel than carry it.”</p><p>Stirring a handful of seeds, leaf bits and utter mysteries into her millet, Atarangi nodded. Her topknot was less immaculate today, with wavy hairs standing out of it, but her eyes were bright within the mask. “I'd like to have variety in my herb supply before I try convincing our dealmaker phoenix. I'm casual with this fellow here,” and she nodded toward her bird, “but I've found there's no such thing as too much care while negotiating with a desperate phoenix. Yours sounds desperate, indeed.”</p><p>Atarangi slipped green confections into her mouth more often than anyone Esha had ever met; small wonder that she understood beasts.</p><p>“You might like some herbs, too,” Atarangi added. “You haven't got any greens in your meal.”</p><p>“Bamboo shoots are green.”</p><p>The sound Atarangi made was almost a laugh. “That's no way to live, squinting at green edges. Please, Esha — have some.” She rose and circled the fire, reaching into one of her many pockets.</p><p>“There's no need to ...” Esha said, but she let the words whisk away into the wind; Atarangi was holding out a month's wages' worth of dried, stacked kudzu leaves.</p><p>“It would be best if you ate more speaking lungta,” she said, “since my kin has introduced himself to you.”</p><p>“I-I can't—“</p><p>“Be at ease: I grow most of my kudzu. This cost me nothing at all.”</p><p>Odd reassurance to give a farming woman, but Esha was in no mood to talk about yam cultivation. She cupped both hands and thanked Atarangi, accepting the small tower of riches into her palms. “So your phoenix ... introduced himself? He knows his own name?” The leaf she slipped into her mouth was crisp and dry but still tasted of luxurious green.</p><p>Atarangi returned to her fireside seat, to her phoenix's side. The look she gave Esha was a freshwater lake, deep and with unsure things creeping in it. “You think he'd recognise a name as his own?”</p><p>“I didn't mean to ...”</p><p>“You can believe what you'd like,” Atarangi said, light. “I'm simply asking.”</p><p>Believing used to be simple; Esha knew Tselaya's weft and weave and she followed those lines. She wondered if the goat was taking her mind now, while she picked up a clump of millet and stared at it.</p><p>“Your bird seems ... like he was raised well. I suppose he could have a name for himself. Even if he doesn't think of heaven while he speaks it.”</p><p>Esha had time to fear whether her answer was the right one, and whether she even believed it herself. Then, a smile broke over Atarangi's face.</p><p>“You’re a hypocrite, Esha of the Fields. But the good kind. Rooftop doesn’t introduce himself to just anyone.”</p><p>“Rooftop ...?” A strange name, off-kilter and that made it seem nearly right. “After the piece of shingle he showed me?”</p><p>Scratching the phoenix's head, so he leaned in grateful, Atarangi said, “I wouldn't say he's named after a piece of roofing bamboo. His name <em>is</em> that piece of shingle — and the sky it touched, and the fact that it's broken away from where it used to be. He showed you the entirety of his name. <em>Rooftop</em> is just the truest way I can think to say it with our human tongues. ”</p><p>Names were a distinction of the heavens, a gift to human people. But this phoenix carried an object around to represent himself and that was very nearly a name. It wasn't even much different from Esha's nameplate; she was aware again of the two plates and two property tokens that had dug into her breastbone all night.</p><p>She thought of the sharp-snapping phoenix that accepted her half-wrought contract and left her gasping on the ground: it was something a cowardly person might do.</p><p>“If I'm going to negotiate for your khukuri,” Atarangi went on, “it would be best if you understood the proceedings. Not every nuance of what we say — I wouldn't expect such from a new raindrop in the ocean. But I think humankind can be more than enemies to phoenixes and for that to happen, humans need to understand. It would honour me if you'd be Rooftop's friend, Esha. Please, extend your lungta to him the same way you would extend it to me, or any other human being.”</p><p>In the edge of Esha's vision, the phoenix flicked his centre crest. Meaning rose and fell before Esha could grasp it — moved by the idea-shifting properties of lungta. The phoenix was speaking and gesturing and he had a <em>name</em>.</p><p>Esha put another kudzu leaf in her mouth, numb to all sensation but the lungta gathering in her tongue. She was an even smaller entity than she thought, not just a low-ranked human of no regard but a woman of few languages, surrounded by an intricate world.</p><p>Atarangi gestured. Her phoenix hopped around the fire, bouncing back to stand before Esha. He chirped two notes — as a greeting, said the lungta's first stirrings.</p><p>It was ludicrous to greet someone after days spent in their company. Nearly as ludicrous as Esha's idea to go on this journey after stringing herself up like a hog. The phoenix fidgeted on his feet, still staring.</p><p>“It's alright,” Atarangi said, soft as wisdom.</p><p>Esha sighed. In this loose-bodied moment, everything she knew was a crumbling relic; she might as well build something new. “Good morning, Rooftop.”</p><p>He let out another pleasant sound, a trilling melody Esha never would have expected from a phoenix. Another friendly statement and that was all Esha could say.</p><p>“He doesn't steal from humans,” Esha asked small, “does he?”</p><p>“He's never had a reason to.”</p><p>“Not even the shingle scrap?”</p><p>“Found it on the ground after a storm. I wouldn't say that's Rooftop's doing.”</p><p>Esha curled her fingers around the crackling kudzu and feared to eat any more: the phoenix's crests were shifting and she was reminded of a wavering, nervous smile. Habit itched in her arms.”Is ... Do phoenixes have divinity in them? Enough to greet them?”</p><p>Shrugging, Atarangi swallowed a gulp of breakfast. “I'm not much of a priest. You can show him namaste if you'd like to: I've told him what it means.”</p><p>Esha considered it, looking over the phoenix and feathers. She hit a clay wall of reluctance, a gut-filling sense that phoenixes weren't people, weren't heaven-touched, weren't anything except fire-starting troublemakers. Except for this one. Esha's time was short and only now did the world decide to</p><p>He sat there patient, regarding Esha,</p><p>“Later, Rooftop,” Atarangi called. “She needs time to think.”</p><p>Rooftop shifted his crests, deflating and paced away — immediate as a human would respond.</p><p>“He— How much Grewian does he understand?” Esha asked. “He's been ...?”</p><p>“He understands most of what we say to each other,” Atarangi agreed.</p><p>“He understands with lungta? Is that why— All the food you give him—?”</p><p>“Partly. He needs to eat the earth's fruit just as much as we do, to stay well.” With one more bite and swallow, Atarangi finished her meal, and as she rose she gave a last leaf to Rooftop so he could snap and crunch at it. “I'm sure this is a lot for you. There's still time to let your thoughts soak. When you're done, let's go to market like we planned.”</p><p>Esha nodded; she was suddenly grateful for that rope to cling to, the fact of humans and their coins.</p><p> </p><p>Maize Plateau's low-caste neighbourhood was made of bamboo and tin, much like Yam's. House flags proclaimed labourer bloodlines, and asked for chile peppers, and offered marriage. Past that realm, the mid-caste homes were a greyer shade of brick than Yam's; a few still had roofs bowing inward after the earthquake, and carpenters milled like ants.</p><p>And while Esha watched mortar-streaked men gesturing at a plan sheet, a humming began under her feet. Another earthquake — <em>another</em> one.</p><p>“Get down,” she snapped to Atarangi, “kneel down!” They were in the open street, safer than under a fallible roof, but Esha's knees weren't bending fast enough and as the tremors took hold, she pitched over onto her spread hands. Dust billowed all around, and among everyone fear-faced in the street, there was Atarangi, kneeling along with them.</p><p>This earthquake rose and fell within one held breath. Stillness came before anyone could grasp it and in the settling dust, people knelt and watched, and listened.</p><p>But it seemed over, and there was nothing to do but stand and keep on. Esha was pushing her own knee to rise when Atarangi shadowed her, offering a hand that pulled Esha mercifully to her feet.</p><p>“Your bird was right,” Esha grunted.</p><p>“It seems such.”</p><p>Around them, voices called: mostly relief and nerve-stiff jokes, and one plaintive cry that was immediately swarmed by neighbours. Esha stood outside it all — with Atarangi, who studied her face like deciding whether Esha needed to be bound up with gauze just in case.</p><p>But all Atarangi did was raise her arm to the sky and beckon — to the phoenix circling in the lungta-speckled clouds. He spiralled back down, swooping to a landing on Atarangi's shoulder.</p><p>“Are earthquakes usually this frequent?” she asked.</p><p>“No... No, not at all.”</p><p>Guards were filtering through the streets, searching for damage. There was nothing more to be said; acts of the gods made patchwork sense to mortals. Esha and Atarangi each took a strap of the wheeled pack, and they walked together.</p><p>The market street was settling from pandemonium, with people righting awnings and wiping dust off their wares. A phalanx of guards gathered at the identification check stall, muttering business to one another — and they snapped to attention when they laid eyes on Atarangi.</p><p>Esha hadn't considered before how much attention a foreign diplomat with a live phoenix would draw. But, patiently, Atarangi answered a travel itinerary's worth of questions for the guards. The phoenix Rooftop allowed a guard to grip his neck while inspecting his tail tag; his stillness was a surreal sight against Esha's memories of vermin birds more vigorous than the fires they started.</p><p>Esha was an unremarkable fieldwoman but as Atarangi's hired guide, she fell under sudden suspicion, too. Her bundle of bamboo was inspected and Gita's nameplate studied by two different scribes, before they crossed off one of Gita's allotted market visits from the records.</p><p>“All seems in order. Thank you for your patience, diplomat,” the lead guard relented.</p><p>“I appear to have arrived at a difficult time,” Atarangi replied. “If I can be of any service, do call on me. I speak five languages, and I have enough herbs in reserve to extend my reach well beyond that.”</p><p>Then, finally, the guard nodded deep and offered her namaste.</p><p> </p><p>“I've never had such trouble getting in,” Esha commented, leaving the station behind. Her other comment was unspoken: <em>do they always inflict that on you?</em></p><p>Shrugging, a mild motion against her annoyed eye roll, Atarangi said, “It happens when I'm new to a plateau. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that I'm a remarkable sight, this far from the ocean. That, and my dangerous friend, here.” She scratched her bird's feathers.</p><p>“It's still more insult than a law-abiding woman should have to take.”</p><p>Gradually, Atarangi's smile was returning. “It'll be worth the trouble, I'm sure.”</p><p>The two of them agreed to meet at the water pump, after buying what supplies they could carry. The phoenix Rooftop sat on Atarangi's wheeled pack and apparently had nothing to say on the matter; Esha only noticed her lungta tugging in her thoughts every time the bird peered at her with crests moving.</p><p>They parted ways and Esha felt the absence already, as Atarangi's stately form parted the crowd and the phoenix watched behind.</p><p>The civilian trading corner had ramshackle tin tables for public use, just like back home. Gwara demons rolled along the tables' bases, seeking spilled coins. Esha shooed the gwaras from a table and sat until her bamboo sticks were all sold. With her pocket full of rupees, she went to the merchant caste section of the market and burdened herself with maize, millet and lentils.</p><p>And after agonizing thought, Esha spent one rupee on a street vendor's fried potato patty. Much as it pained her to let the coin out of her hand, the patty was crisp and oily enough to taste like bliss. There were many reasons to stay among humans as long as possible, and fried food was one of them.</p><p>When Esha returned to the water plaza, under noonday sun, she combed the crowd with her eyes and could only see Grewier, Sherbu and Thakari people, not Atarangi nor her bird. Esha got a cup of well water and relished it despite the taste of mud. Then, she waited.</p><p>A goat breeder led his flock past — thoroughbred tahr goats with imperial inspection seals shaved into their magnificent fur. They were certified for their lack of turned human ancestry — only goats born as goats — for all the expensive difference that didn't make. After Esha's humanity was gone, she would likely end up as meat, killed and called dinner: she couldn't manage to care whether a cliff cat or a demon or a hungry human would do it.</p><p>But as the goats' every movement dragged Esha's attention across the crowded square, Atarangi caught her eye — not standing out bizarre from a crowd, but tucked under an awning's shade. She sat on an overturned bucket before a Sherbu man, who held a kneeling yak by its rope collar.</p><p>As Esha came closer through the drifting crowds, she saw more of the truth. Atarangi spoke with gentle-frowning lips and paused to listen, as the yak grumbled and bleated. The phoenix Rooftop sat on her shoulder, also intent. Animism, the sullied art. Animism, the waste of herbs. It looked as heartfelt as any other lungta-aided conversation.</p><p>Esha waited by the water pump, safely distant.</p><p>Once Atarangi accepted a furtive handful of payment, she rejoined Esha and took the heavy food onto her wheeled pack. With the phoenix Rooftop watching the trail behind, they set out toward the mountainside, toward the spire pass that would bring them up to Rice Plateau.</p><p>“Whose yak was that?” Esha asked, in the clamorous.</p><p>“No friend I know. He saw me with Rooftop and asked about my diplomacy services.”</p><p>“People just ask you that, in the street?”</p><p>“I don't mind.” Atarangi paused. “As long as they don't seem to want Birdnose.”</p><p>“Oh, I look like a drug addict, do I?”</p><p>“No, no, you're right,” Atarangi said, smiling at her own expense. “I shouldn't think such things about fieldwomen. So far, you're only a name thief.”</p><p>It was good to say such blunt-clawed things with a friend again; Esha hadn't realized how much she missed it.</p><p>“I can't cane you for telling the truth," she told Atarangi. "Tell me, though — what was wrong with the yak?”</p><p>“Aah, the poor creature is sick. Liver fluke, I think, or else something more serious than even that.”</p><p>“You can tell?”</p><p>“She told me where she hurt.” Atarangi's mouth betrayed her shifting feelings. “I wish I could help more than I did, but at least now her owner knows to seek some medicine.”</p><p>Esha's memories were rising again. “It shouldn't have been allowed to graze in wet places,” she said. “They get flukes when they eat from marshy ground — I'm no yakherd and even I know that.”</p><p>“You're familiar with them?” Atarangi asked. “Yes, you plough with yaks — isn't that true?”</p><p>“It is. And I had a yak, in a way, when I used to be married.”</p><p>“You did?”</p><p>Esha hummed. The yak was one of her husband's fine possessions at first. Then a coarse-furred comfort to pet. Then one drunken night, he was a listening ear for her rambling troubles — and eventually, he was part of the divorce chattel, just another shard in Esha's broken potential.</p><p>“He was a good beast to talk to,” she told Atarangi.</p><p>“Talking can mend plenty. I'm sure you know that.”</p><p>Heaving a breath for strength, Esha nodded. And she accepted the handful of plant morsels that Atarangi gave her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The road led north-west toward the mountainside, through archways of whipgrass, boxthorn and sparse-needled pines. Lungta swooped across the path, each mote glinting brilliant before it buried itself in the earth. Starlings flew overhead in a chittering wave.</p><p>Esha and Atarangi walked, shoes crunching in tandem, with the wheeled pack creaking under the weight of their supplies. It took Esha long moments to chew the dried plant morsels enough to swallow them: they were root pieces and that was all Esha could discern. Whatever they were, the faintly leafy flavour pleased Esha in a way she didn't care to think about.</p><p>“What is this?” she asked. “This root ...?”</p><p>“Pachak thistle,” Atarangi said. “You'll find it full of speaking lungta, but it's not the same as betel — it's much more inclined to listening than speaking.”</p><p>Judging by the tingling in Esha's ear canals, Atarangi was right.</p><p>“I hope that's enough to— Hold on.”</p><p>The wheels and hooves sounding in the distance had become a yak-drawn cart, piled with coal and wreathed with dust: Esha and Atarangi waited until it passed them by in a gritty cloud. Esha spat, and she had hardly eased her eyelashes back open when Atarangi laughed a sonorous note.</p><p>“What's funny about that?” Esha asked. She looked around in the dust-hung air and saw only Atarangi beaming, and the phoenix settling his wings.</p><p>“Aah, you didn't see it,” Atarangi said. “Show Esha?”</p><p>The phoenix Rooftop unfolded his wings and curled them together, then ducked his long neck underneath — under an umbrella made of his own plumage.</p><p>“Cleverer than most human beings,” Atarangi said, “yes?”</p><p>“I wouldn't have thought of it,” Esha admitted.</p><p>“You've eaten, haven't you?”</p><p><em>You should converse with the animal again,</em> she meant; Esha didn't need to extend lungta to figure that out. Rooftop sat on the staff, straightened up as attentive as any student.</p><p>“I ate it all,” Esha said. “Thistle, you said? It's not expensive, is it?”</p><p>“Not enough to worry about.”</p><p>Which didn't soothe Esha, coming from a high-caste's mouth, but she still found herself trusting Atarangi.</p><p>“Rooftop?” Atarangi tapping her shoulder, “Try again, if you wish.”</p><p>He landed on his master's shoulder before her mouth had closed, buffeting her gently with wing-wind and shuffling his feet into place. And now the phoenix Rooftop blocked Atarangi from sight, this clever creature still staring at Esha in a way too intense to stand.</p><p>He trilled. <em>Hail,</em> Esha understood. Or perhaps he said <em>pardon me</em>, or something else; the sound had a solid core of requesting attention.</p><p>“I'm,” Esha said, “I'm listening.”</p><p>She made herself look at the phoenix. His beaked face showed no emotion, his eyes as glimmering as they always were — but his neck was a tight, tall curl, his middle feather crest flared higher than the two side crests. Lungta overlaid it all with understanding: he was pleased. And surprised, and hopeful.</p><p>He creaked a melody. <em>“Dawn yellow!”</em></p><p>“Yaah ... Hello,” Esha murmured. “Atarangi, have I eaten enough? He's talking about dawn ...?”</p><p>“Phoenixes arrange their ideas differently than any human tongue I've ever known.” Her smile sounded in her voice. “Dawn means a beginning, or a greeting. Like the sun beginning the day, you see?”</p><p>“Dear gods. I don't know if I'll understand.”</p><p>“I'm sure you'll manage.”</p><p>Rooftop still stared.</p><p>“You're ... giving me a greeting?” Esha tried.</p><p>“<em>Yes, yes,”</em> he croaked. <em>“Human tongues might say ... Roof-top is happy to be meeting you.”</em></p><p>He spoke as awkward as a foreigner — because he was a Tselayan creature but he <em>was</em> foreign, in a way. He was a race Esha had never considered speaking with until one individual stood before her, extending his lungta.</p><p>That struck Esha like a thrown stone: this phoenix, who had a name truly his, was extending his ideas to her. And Esha was seeing — truly <em>seeing</em> now — the shifting of his crests and the angles of his postured body. Rooftop's feathers were nearly as plain as a human's expressive face.</p><p>“I am ... pleased to make a new friend,” Esha pushed from her mouth. She was too stunned to feel, too windburned by the truth — but she had never regretted a friend before.</p><p>Rooftop sang, a chittering that meant a buttery shade of yellow and also delight. <em>“You own a selfname? Will you share with me?”</em></p><p>“You know my—“ Esha suddenly knew that she had never met eyes with Rooftop and introduced herself, because of course she hadn't. “I— My name is Esha.”</p><p>Her own name felt like glass beads, rolling smooth through her lungta-charged ear canals. Esha rarely remembered that names were older forms of Grewian words, relics of spoken words past, but Rooftop's quizzical head tilt reminded her now.</p><p>“<em>That selfname means ...?”</em></p><p>“Precious one.” She had long since stopped thinking about the irony of her name, given to a child soon disavowed.</p><p>“I don't know how she would express <em>Precious One</em> with an object,” Atarangi added in a teaching voice. “It's an idea that's hard to hold and show.”</p><p>Rooftop's outer crests lowered and spread flat — in disagreement, said the lungta translation. <em>“Many-hundreds of objects are precious. Wood for burning. First treefruit in yellow-green spring. White seeds.”</em> He squawked sudden, and chattered, <em>“Precious One, I give interest! Do you grow precious-food?”</em></p><p>She sorted and matched his ideas, mind racing. “Precious food? What does that mean?” She hissed a sigh, letting out some of the tension pent inside her like steam. “I'm sorry, Atarangi, this must be the worst lungta-shared meeting you've ever heard.”</p><p>Atarangi shook her head. “Not at all, you’re handling this well. I’ve met diplomats who speak eight tongues but they look like there’s a snake in their underclothes when Rooftop asks them a question. <em>Precious-food</em> usually means lungta-rich herbs, or fruit with many seeds in it. But in some phrasings, it simply means anything a phoenix can eat.”</p><p>That made sense, Esha tentatively supposed. Even the humblest of low-caste foods could be precious, if one was hungry.</p><p>“Then,” she told Rooftop, “yes, I grow precious food. Mainly yams. You know what yams are? The— The root of a plant. Big round roots.” She spread her hands and touched their fingertips, approximating the size and shape of a yellowmeat yam.</p><p>“<em>Yes, yams!”</em> The eager creaking beyond the lungta was strikingly familiar, a sound like <em>ee-am-zz </em>pouring out of Rooftop's unflexing beak. <em>“Ground-ball food, is what phoenix-kind would say. Morning Sky cooks yams with grass-powder around them. They hold too much red-sizzle-heat but wait ten flaps and then it is excellent fill-up food. Crunch crunch, then one is full and brown-wholesome-pleased.”</em></p><p>“Morning Sky?” Esha muttered. “Gods, it's a riddle. Atarangi, you're Morning Sky? That's your selfname ...?”</p><p>“It is,” she said proud.</p><p>“And grass powder ... He means, what, flour?”</p><p>“He likes your yams floured and fried.” Atarangi glowed with amusement, looking between the two of them.</p><p>“<em>Floured,”</em> Rooftop corrected himself. His throat croaked <em>vv-ow-rr-g</em>. “And fried.” <em>Vv-rie-d</em>.</p><p>“Oh, heaven help me,” Esha blurted, “he's— Rooftop, are you saying Grewian words?!”</p><p>Glee flared his crests broad, as he tipped his head at Esha. <em>“Yes, yes! I am learning greener words from Morning Sky! You like this calling-tongue better?”</em></p><p>She could only mumble, and it was an oath.</p><p>“Don't curse in front of him, please,” Atarangi said. But she was grinning, as welcome as any yellow dawn.</p><p> </p><p>Esha kept speaking with Rooftop as the road wore on. She knew this to be true, although she unknotted fewer and fewer meanings from his colour-drenched chattering; she was a spectator in her own body, less present than the wind.</p><p>Atarangi hushed Rooftop after some time, and fed him a palmful of morsels. She asked if Esha wanted to stop and rest — and yes, Esha said, she did. She needed to get off her gradually numbing legs and stop thinking.</p><p>They stopped by the roadside, to sit in a soft-yielding patch of sand and new gumgrass. Down the road, by the mountain's face, other travellers had a smoke-billowing fire burning in a rest site: that was no place for a pair of false-named animism users. That was what Esha was now — an animist. She had spoken with animals on too many occasions to claim accident or innocence.</p><p>Settled back on the wheeled pack, Rooftop preened his feathers like the most commonplace of songbirds.</p><p>“Well?” Atarangi asked Esha.</p><p>She rubbed her face up and down. “He's ... He's got a mind of his own. I have to admit that.”</p><p>“Aren't you glad you agreed to try?” Atarangi asked, low-murmured like a secret. “Most humans never get to share company with a phoenix. They're too comfortable in their stone-walled minds.”</p><p>“Yes, walled,” Esha murmured.</p><p>With searching eyes, Atarangi considered her. She rose briefly to dig in a side pocket of the wheeled pack, and produced a pine candle. A few flicks of her iron fire striker later, they sat opposite a pungent candle flame, like a miniature hearth fire to warm their hands by.</p><p>“Is something wrong?”</p><p>“No,” Esha lied. “Well ... The animism just has me thinking about beasts and what their minds are like— And Rooftop is plenty intelligent! It's just that ... I don't know if I'll be able to return to Yam Plateau.”</p><p>Atarangi regarded her for a silent moment, maybe sorting out the mess coming from Esha's mouth. “Why is that?”</p><p>The truth didn't feel any better, spilled out into the open like that. Esha hunched closer to the candle, caging its warmth with her fingers. “I need the Kanakisipt khukuri back for my retirement. That retirement is— Well, I'm ... making bigger changes all the time. Maybe we'll get my khukuri back but even if we don't ... I won't be able to work, soon. I need to retire.”</p><p>Another pause. Atarangi was patching it together but her frown kept getting more forlorn. “Making bigger changes, you say. Already ...? I thought you were just saving for far-off days.”</p><p>Esha's regretted the entirety of this moment. Her beginning of a confession, and her body's continuing betrayal, and the soil and sky of the world all around. But at least she had someone to talk to. Two someones, she supposed, since the phoenix was listening and Esha didn't have the heart to shoo him away.</p><p>“I'll say it, for clarity. My ... inhuman traits. They're taking firmer hold every day. It's why I have these horns, obviously enough, and it's why I limp.”</p><p>“Really?! You aren't nearly old enough.”</p><p>A bitter laugh escaped Esha's throat. “I must be, if it's happening.”</p><p>“How old are you, good fieldwoman?”</p><p>“Forty-eight years.”</p><p>A nervous shell of a smile formed on Atarangi. “Such a jewel to know. I thought you were ... Mm, I'm not sure what I thought.”</p><p>“Can't tell how old a fieldwoman is by looking at her, hmm?” Esha smiled a little herself. “We're mysterious sometimes, all sun-worn and hardy.”</p><p>“That must be it,” Atarangi laughed. Another moment rummaging through her pack — nudging Rooftop aside this time — and Atarangi found a waterskin. “Your traits are this prominent already?”</p><p>This was an inevitable question: Esha must have been raising the animist's curiosity with every detail of this cryptic bargain. “They— They started showing too soon. When I was a child.” She rubbed again at her face, before realizing that her headwrap was riding up and yanking it back toward her eyebrows with mortified speed. “Early onset traits, the physician said, and there's no way to treat that. My forty-eighth summer and I'm wearing out already.”</p><p>Atarangi paused, wearing some expression Esha couldn't bring herself to look at. “I thought so. I've never seen a Grewier wearing a headwrap if they weren't trying to cover something ...”</p><p>“Are you the same?” Esha dared to ask. “With your mask?”</p><p>Mad courage let her look at Atarangi now — and she was met with a cockeyed smile and a gleaming of mask-shaded eyes.</p><p>“I've got traits, too. This summer will be my thirty-second, so I've got to be showing <em>some</em> trace of what's hidden in the clouds. It's not nearly the same for my people, though. I'm not wearing this mask to cover up shame.”</p><p>“No?”</p><p>Atarangi took a deep draw from the waterskin, and wiped a sheen of moisture from the corner of her honest mouth.</p><p>“The strangest part of Tselaya's children,” she said, milk-mild, “is how scared you are of your own selves.”</p><p>“Not ourselves — the beasts! The things taking over.”</p><p>“What's the difference? We grow old, we stop being the people we were. Everyone does it. I suppose we Manyori just don't see the use in being afraid.”</p><p>She held out the waterskin in one hand — one unblemished hand accustomed to paper and quill, although it had dirt under the perfect nails now. Esha accepted it.</p><p>“I've got sea eagle traits,” Atarangi said. “The same breed of sea eagles from the same place I was born, the northmost shores of the Vast Shark's waters. I started shifting at the end of my sixteenth year. It showed first on the tip of my nose, same as my father.”</p><p>“What did you do?” Esha asked small.</p><p>Atarangi turned her face to the sky, seeing something not there. “I welcomed it. Even though I would someday cease being myself and start being the eagle, she still felt like a cousin I had never met before, or ... like knowing who <em>I</em> was for the first time. When the tip of my nose hardened enough to be called a beak, my family feasted. And I got this.” She drew fond fingertips down her ink-patterned chin. “It let my heart skip on waves, for a while.”</p><p>Esha couldn't speak. It was a fable too sweet to tell a child, that the animal within was some kind of gradually met friend.</p><p>“It wasn't such a joy once I came to Tselaya. My request for caste placement was turned down. Rejecting someone for their trait would be absurd among my people. But I applied again, with a more substantial payment the second time. And I don't imagine I need to explain this part: I agreed to wear the mask in public at all times.”</p><p>“You ... gave up what you had, for a life like this?”</p><p>“Gave it up for the time being,” Atarangi said. “If my efforts here all crumble to sand, I've got somewhere to return to. But I've already made allies on this mountain who are worth the heartache. I've already gathered a few assets and learned a few tricks. There's nowhere to climb but upward.”</p><p>“You think so?”</p><p>“I do.”</p><p>Esha couldn't speak. Atarangi had grown up in a golden fortune of circumstances and she threw it all aside, for the stifling caste rules of a society not hers. She covered her face and bore the weight of whispers every day because she <em>chose</em> to.</p><p>And Esha wanted to ask more — ask what Atarangi's gathered assets were, ask what she planned to do with Gita Of The Fields's property token, ask why all of it was worthwhile. But Atarangi licked her fingers and pinched the candle flame out, before rising and stroking Rooftop's feathers.</p><p>“Are your knees able, Esha? We should keep on.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They reached the next spire pass in the full breadth of afternoon. After waiting for a dust-streaked merchant to unload his wares from the pulley rig and forge away toward the Maize market, Esha and Atarangi began climbing themselves. The lowest end of Rice Plateau hung above their heads — part of the tiered waterfall of rice paddies that kept Tselaya's citizens fed.</p><p>With thrown selfropes, they climbed by increments into the cliffside wind. Esha's joints were failing after the long days of walking, her ankles tender and reluctant to flex; she thought she was imagining it but no, Atarangi was stepping slower, too. Rooftop fluttered anxious between the spires, present alongside them but too slight-bodied to be of any help.</p><p>After a few barren toehold plateaus and more crawling hours of climbing, Atarangi hauled herself over Rice Plateau's edge. Her hand locked with Esha's and help bear her weight over, and when the straining was over they both sank to the ground to remember how to breathe.</p><p>“Are you well?” Esha asked.</p><p>“Fine, just sap-spent,” Atarangi wheezed. “I'm not used to the climbing.”</p><p>“Messengers make these climbs every day. Some boast twice a day.” After another gulped breath, Esha added, “I'd hate to be one.”</p><p>Nodding — and grimacing at the thought — Atarangi waved Rooftop nearer. “Kindly check for guards.”</p><p>He trilled, a note Esha remembered as a dutiful <em>yes</em>. With a few effortless-looking wingbeats, he sailed off over the bamboo stands and pine saplings, his tail tag flashing in sunset's light.</p><p>Esha and Atarangi dragged the wheeled pack up onto sure land. And then they sat waiting, at a path junction leading into the plateau.</p><p>Anticipation gathered in Esha's gut. If she chose a direction and walked, she might find a sight from her leatherworking life — some levee or stairway she knew the contours of, or a face that creased displeased at her.</p><p>“No campsite that I can see,” Atarangi mused.</p><p>“This high up, it'll be deeper in the wildgrowth. Protection from the wind. And keeping it out of sight from anyone too high-caste to think about it; they don't like seeing stray labourers.”</p><p>Atarangi hummed, a gradual consideration. “Well, they'll have to file a complaint with me if they don't like the sight of you. You've travelled this high, friend?”</p><p>“A long time ago.” Esha had no answer more worthwhile than that. “If we search out the campsite, will Rooftop be able to find us?”</p><p>“He should manage.” Hefting to her feet, Atarangi said, “Please — lead the way.”</p><p>They headed inward, through the gale-bent bamboo and pines and into taller, grander forests. Deodar cedars stood like gathered gods, stretching ten meters upward and spreading their lacy teal needles against the shining sky. The air was as crisp as fresh incense: Esha took a homespun joy in watching Atarangi savour her every breath.</p><p>“I'm sure Rooftop will find guards here,” Atarangi murmured. “Such beautiful trees.”</p><p>“Not as many guards here as past the snowline. Plenty of rangers, though, and they've got feet as quiet as a cat's. Don't harvest any branches.”</p><p>“Oh, I won't risk my sigil for cedar oil. If I keep anything here,” Atarangi said, her voice falling to a conspirator's murmur, “it'll be a mushroom.”</p><p>Through the towering cedars, Rooftop called out clear — and he came soaring, rushing past the two of them and whirling back around on finger-flared wings.</p><p>“Welcome back, my kin!” Atarangi raised a bent arm, offering her elbow like a comfortable stool, and Rooftop landed so short that he wobbled, fluttering. His crests undulated — friendly and relieved, Esha's lungta traces said — as Atarangi stroked his ruffed neck. And then, to Esha's bright surprise, he turned gaze to her and repeated the friendly crest gesture.</p><p>Active guards in the area were all headed away from them, Rooftop reported and Atarangi helped translate. They were free to seek a handful of the trees' mushrooms.</p><p>They considered making hurried camp among the cedars, and said as much aloud several times. But a campsite appeared in a bamboo grove at the cedars' edge, a newly minted site with only a trace of ashes in the hearth pit and a market-new clay statue of guardian Parvati.</p><p>Dusk veiled the sky by the time Esha was setting a cooking pot into burning bamboo. “No mushroom hunting tonight, I suppose,” she said, dry. She was privately grateful for it; the day had already demanded too much of her bones and Atarangi's provided pain herb wasn't hurrying to get to work.</p><p>“There's gathering I can do without leaving, at least.” With her dagger point, Atarangi gestured to the white-filmed bamboo stick she was fiddling with in her lap. “These have more mushroom on them than I've seen anywhere.”</p><p>“Yaah,” Esha said, “that's a mushroom?”</p><p>“A colony of them, yes.”</p><p>Atarangi held up her dagger, showing the harvest scraped onto the tip. Even gathered up, it looked more like the residue on a rice pot than any mushroom Esha had ever seen.</p><p>“It's a wholesome enough food to bother with, I've found,” Atarangi said. “Seems as though it draws lungta from the bamboo and refines it further: there's plenty of thought-sharpening essence in this mushroom and yet Tselayan folk don't seem to know it's here.”</p><p>“We call it gwara spit,” Esha said. “I've always heard tell that it's poisonous.”</p><p>“Mm, everything is poisonous if you eat too much.”</p><p>“No one's ever reported a death due to excess yams.”</p><p>From around the fuel shed, Rooftop's tufted head appeared. <em>“Ee-am-zz?”</em></p><p>“Ah,” Atarangi beamed, “you've summoned him. For another deliberation on the merits of yams.”</p><p>Bringing some bamboo sticks with him — wound loose into his stringfeathers and dragging a path through shrivelled-dry bamboo leaves — Rooftop strutted around the fire to sit by Esha. He croaked something Esha didn't have enough speaking lungta to sort out, something ending with a permission question.</p><p>“One moment.” She dug into her satchel for more of Atarangi's green snack foods. The arrival of bitter lungta herbs in her diet had turned out to be a boon, improving her energy without any of the stomach upset Esha would have expected from a less human gut. “Alright, Rooftop, what is it?”</p><p>He fidgeted his wings, crests flared eager. <em>“I want to ask: you green-grow yams?”</em></p><p>“Yes, I work on a farm. Atarangi has told you what castes are, hasn't she?”</p><p>Across the fire and the simmering lentils, Atarangi smiled and held her peace.</p><p>But Rooftop bobbed agreement. <em>“Humans on Tselaya Mountain are born to their work.”</em></p><p>“That's right.” It sounded simple, phrased like that.</p><p>Rooftop trilled, and fidgeted more. <em>“Kin Precious One? You dig in the ground, yes? With a metal-foot?”</em></p><p>“A what?”</p><p>“Shovel,” Atarangi corrected.</p><p>“<em>Zz-ohh-vel. Can I look at your shovel?”</em></p><p>“When it's this small, it's called a spade. But very well.” She produced it from the bottom of her satchel, and set it on the leaves for Rooftop to pick up tentative in his beak. Esha had never considered how metalwork must look and feel to a phoenix — but if she had only ever wielded raw pebbles of iron ore, she would be impressed by a spade, too. Or impressed by a khukuri's blade.</p><p>“<em>How does one use a shovel?”</em> Rooftop asked, breaking Esha's thoughts. <em>“The same as a digging foot? Dig for me to see, please!”</em></p><p>Esha smiled crooked; miracles came in simple forms, sometimes. So for this bird's education, she drove the spade into the earth like she did on any common day.</p><p>They ate dinner while Esha dug holes, just like she would during Janjuman's workday. She even cut up a spring-harvest yellowmeat from their supplies and buried the slices near the bamboo coppice, for Rooftop to see how to his beloved yams were cultivated.</p><p>Once the last piece was buried, a whim bade Esha to leave it there. That one yam would grow plenty more. Maybe make a meal for some hungry traveller. Esha was giving food away — because now, in these irregular days, she was suddenly <em>able</em> to give. She wasn't a faceless servant in Janjuman's roster, nor a failure to be erased from history. She was a person, and she had lived and loved and cried — and now, with the help of a strange noble, she could share. It was a feeling warmer than any hearth coals. She even asked Rooftop if there was anything else he'd like to know.</p><p>“It's fine to see you two getting along,” Atarangi said, scraping gwara spit from the last bamboo stick. “Please, Esha, answer all his questions so I won't need to.”</p><p>“Yaah, I'm no tutor.”</p><p>“You say that after teaching a fine lesson. Hypocrisy!” Turning her dancing eyes toward them, Atarangi said, “In seriousness, though — Rooftop, you should stop speaking Grewian words. She needs to grow accustomed to the true nature of Tselayan phoenix tongue.”</p><p>It felt like a door thrown open to winter wind. Rooftop was speaking a mixed-breed pidgin language for her — and the thief phoenix wasn't going to offer so much courtesy. Esha turned her wide-open eyes to Rooftop: he shrank with disappointment, too, and that was a pinch of solace.</p><p>But still, they talked. Talked well into the depth of night, after Atarangi crawled into her tent and went silently still, Esha and Rooftop kept talking. They shared more thistle and kudzu and all the other indeterminate green bits the good diplomat was feeding them.</p><p>Rooftop's phoenix cries still came through the lungta as rainbow-coloured riddles, but with practice and with Rooftop's cheerful patience, Esha began sorting them. All of his colour words made sense except when they didn't. Lighter shades of yellow stood for joy, warmth and new beginnings, or else child-hearted whimsy. Green meant wholesome food or a constructed object — unless it meant the uneasy mysteries of blue-green water. Red was usually something good; white represented heat or light; and every shade of brown under the sky seemed to mean something starkly different. Phoenixes, Esha determined, spoke a thousand colours of house flags.</p><p>Eventually, the late hour weighed insistent on her eyelids. Esha had stretched her mind more today than in the last decade of harvesting: that was ample to start with. She crept into her tarpaulin tent and enjoyed collapsing into her blankets, particularly the motion of her freed hair spilling as far as the spiral goat horns would allow.</p><p>“<em>Precious One?” </em>came Rooftop's voice at the tarpaulin's opening.</p><p>Panic bound Esha, the shame of her weak humanity exposed for all to see— but the feeling had no teeth this time because Rooftop was a <em>bird</em>, for gods' sake.</p><p>“Yes?” she answered soft. “I'm awake.”</p><p>Rooftop's head snaked around the tent's edge, silhouetted by the dying embers. His crests were shapes that matched worry-flat human mouths in Esha's mind. Step by step, he crept to Esha's bedside. <em>“Can we-two share more cream-yellow-conversation?”</em></p><p>She stifled her groan. “Aren't you tired?”</p><p>“<em>Sand-small. Kreh ... stone-moderate.”</em> he admitted. His feet shuffled on leaves. <em>“Kin, I give you a fog-blue question. Maybe you will give me a sight of white truth. You slime-green-hate us, we phoenix-kin? Yes, or no?” </em></p><p>She pooled full of answers, there in the dark. Esha wasn't sure she hated anything as much as the green mold that ruined good food — but she had called phoenixes vermin, and wished them death. Sometimes over a petty handful of rupees.</p><p>“I used to hate phoenix-kin,” she murmured. “Now ... Well, I'm not sure. I don't think I do, now that I've met a phoenix. Doesn't seem like there's anything to hate about you.”</p><p>His crests bounced high; that was how Esha knew she had answered true.</p><p>“Do you like humans?” she asked.</p><p>Rooftop bobbed agreement. <em>“I do! Sometimes humans make dust-brown-stupid mistakes. But I golden-like humans. Some are bad? Purple. Orchid-purple-true. But turn this in your grasp, my kin: if I eat a rotten fruit, my gut is brown-rolling-sick — but I have no blue-green-hate for fruit. I cannot do that. I will starve. Yes?”</em></p><p>However much it made Esha's mind throb, this was a thought any wordsmith would call elegant.</p><p>“Yes,” she managed. “That's a fine thing to say. A lot of people aren't that forgiving. Ah, well, maybe Atarangi is.”</p><p>Fidgeting, Rooftop ducked low, his crests disappearing and his voice rasping with Grewian again. <em>“Let me say this so you will hold and understand, Precious One. Morning Sky is my closest kin, my heart-wood.” </em>He clacked his beak.<em> “Heart-fire?  </em>Krrek.<em> My close-friend.”</em></p><p>“Treasure those when you find them,” Esha said soft.</p><p>“<em>I do, I treasure-hold her. Same with all we phoenix-kin, we wearing Morning Sky's tail tags.”</em></p><p>“She chose you to come on this trip? Fortunate for you.”</p><p>“<em>I have ... I have the most lucky.”</em></p><p>“Mmm.”</p><p>“<em>Morning Sky is a rare-special friend. But ... humans are maybe all good kin, I think. When they learn how to be.”</em></p><p>Esha meant to answer, she truly did. But in the time she took grasping a thought, Rooftop trilled a good-night wish like a lullabye and shuffled away into the dark.</p><p>As she wafted into sleep, like lungta through gathered clouds, it occurred to Esha that purple was the song-flower hue, the rare colour hoarded by noble-born humans. Purple, to a phoenix, meant greed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They packed up camp in the fog-hung morning, the sky's lungta falling as a mist of silver-green through the cedars. Atarangi looked well this morning, her topknot immaculately braided and her every movement brisk.</p><p>“We should depart,” she said, “if we're going to go to market and still reach the spire pass. Rooftop, we haven't spoken with our dealmaker lately — please find her and advise her that we'll arrive in, hmm. Two days. We will be sure to bring trade goods the likes of which she's never seen.”</p><p>Esha had to admit it sounded tempting, the idea of all the magic-rich delicacies Atarangi could possibly yield from her deep pocket. She could only assume that a wild bird, used to scratching for its own meals, would feel the same.</p><p>“<em>Am your kin</em>,” Rooftop agreed. He snapped up a last dry kudzu shard from Atarangi's fingers, and flapped away, upward.</p><p>As the fog lifted, Esha and Atarangi reloaded wheeled pack and piled some of Esha's split bamboo on top, to make one cart ready for market.</p><p>“Whoever made this device of yours made it well,” Esha said, watching a spoked wheel's movement as they pulled. “It doesn't even groan under this much weight.”</p><p>“It's been dependable as a dog for me. When I was first leaving Tselaya's foothills, I had so many lock-chests that ...”</p><p>Atarangi's steps slowed and the cart drew past her: her gaze was trained on something in the lowgrowth.</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“That's ...?” Her pack strap tossed aside, Atarangi hurried away crunching into the whipgrass. “It is! What is the name— Bankakri flower!”</p><p>Well, Esha thought, she wasn't about to pull the load alone. As she followed Atarangi and peered over her shoulder, she saw what the commotion was: a frail plant with leaves like lax-spread hands, topped with a pink bud.</p><p>“This was the first lungta foods I bought with my diplomat's salary. A real taste of Tselaya, the herbalist said. These last few years, I can seldom buy it, though.”</p><p>“Rangers cut too much, probably,” Esha said. “And nobles hid anything that remains in some hothouse.”</p><p>Tracing the leaves with one finger, Atarangi hummed. “Esha, may I borrow your spade?”</p><p>Old wariness returned to Esha, that feeling that broken laws hung in the air. “You're digging it up?”</p><p>“For preservation,” Atarangi replied. “By me or by the dealmaker phoenix: I haven't decided yet.”</p><p>Diplomats had wildflower harvesting rights, but only when the proper reams of permissions were filled out. Esha shifted on her feet. “If you think it's best.” She pulled her spade from her belt — where she was once again wearing it, for Rooftop's sake.</p><p>Atarangi had collected wild plants before; it was clear from her technique with the spade, her careful teasing of root threads from the moist-crumbling soil. She grew kudzu and gods only knew what else in her esoteric house, so Esha supposed she shouldn't have been surprised.</p><p>With the bankakri flower freed and cradled in Atarangi's hand, Esha began twisting where she stood, scanning the forest around them. Nerves pushed her to it: Atarangi was wrapping a pocket-cloth around the root ball, the theft nearly complete.</p><p>Movement flickered past the bamboo leaves — a distant fleck of imperial red.</p><p>“Stop,” Esha hissed. “Guards!”</p><p>With a flick of her hand, Atarangi slid the plant into a cloak pocket. The shaggy edge of the cloak fell back against her arm just as a lead guard rounded the bamboo stalks.</p><p>“Hail, subjects.”</p><p>“Hail.” Esha gave namaste, her arms trembling with the motions. Atarangi had the gall to take up the spade and fill in her hole before she straightened to attention.</p><p>These three guards only looked more intimidating as they drew close: they had Grewian features and singed-paper brown skin. These were experienced guards marked by years in the sun: they must have ground away their sense of mercy for poachers.</p><p>“Hail as well,” Atarangi added, She nudged her laddered-bead necklace, the one bearing her caste sigil. “Is there some trouble here?”</p><p>The guards expressions shifted like water soaking into earth. Grudging as pulled teeth, they drew their hands together in namaste, which Atarangi returned with a leaf-edge smile.</p><p>“This is a routine patrol, good diplomat,” the lead guard said. “for the preservation of the Empire's order. Your name?”</p><p>“Atarangi Te Waaka.”</p><p><em>Ah, she's a Manyori</em> ran silently across the guard's face. “Allow me to welcome you to Rice Plateau, madam. Couldn't keep from noticing, though, that you and your companion are digging. What is your business?”</p><p>“I was admiring your trees,” Atarangi replied, “and wanted to see what their roots looked like. Nothing like this grows where I hail from.”</p><p>It was better than any excuse Esha had ever slapped together — but still, the lead guard's eyes narrowed while he nodded.</p><p>Fear clotted larger in Esha's gut — and as she felt trembling under her feet, she knew why. A quake was rising again, another one, yet again.</p><p>“Get low!” she and the lead guard cried in broken unison. All of them spread their feet; they threw hands against the nearest trees; they snagged their gazes of fear together.</p><p>The earthquake went on for a dozen pounding heartbeats, before it faded. The forest rang with its own stillness; birds yelped in flocks overhead. The guards returned to planted-foot soldier stance, but their faces still read plainly human.</p><p>“Are you well, subjects?” the leader barked, bracing against a tree to rise.</p><p>Esha nodded, her head a loose thing on her neck.</p><p>“I believe so,” Atarangi said breathless.</p><p>“We'll make note of your presence here on Rice, diplomat, and leave you to your work. We must ensure that all is well after that earthquake. Take note: Atarangi Te Waaka, a diplomat, is passing through Rice on personal business.”</p><p>The documenting soldier hurried an inkstick from her pocket. “Additional notes?”</p><p>“The diplomat is accompanied by— Your nameplate, citizen?”</p><p>No prompt for a bribe, and no mere request for Esha's name. Esha was a changing woman but still a lowly <em>fieldwoman </em>and under the guard's flinty stare, she lifted a hand.</p><p>“Is that necessary?” Atarangi asked, convincingly mild but she was too late: Esha was drawing her nameplate from under her shirt.</p><p>Esha froze — and the leader furrowed brows at her.</p><p>“Go on.”</p><p>She pulled out her nameplate with the exquisite awareness of her mistake: she was showing the wrong nameplate, the bright metal marked <em>Esha</em>, not <em>Gita</em>.</p><p>“Esha Of The Fields—“ the leader confirmed.</p><p>“Sir.” The third guard turned from watching behind them, eyes round with fear, “Smoke is visible from Durbavra Tier.”</p><p>“Noted,” the leader snapped. “The diplomat— Ah. She is accompanied by a fieldwoman guide. End note.” The lead soldier fixed an appraising gaze on Atarangi, and glanced it briefly to Esha. “A coin of advice: mind yourselves while in the Empire's forests. As you were.”</p><p>Even after the guards vanished from sight, walking brisk and then running toward town, Esha couldn't let her tightness of breath go. “Gods' balls, I thought I was going to die.”</p><p>“From the guards, or from the earthquake?” Atarangi's face was too stark to carry the joke well; she took up her wheeled pack strap and passed Esha hers.</p><p>“It hardly matters which.”</p><p>“Another earthquake ...” Atarangi shook her head. “I've heard of aftershocks, but not three such commanding quakes within a month. This can't be normal, can it?”</p><p>“No,” Esha said. “Something must be displeased with us. All humans, I mean.”</p><p>Pressing her broad lips, Atarangi worked at that thought.</p><p>“We should burn juniper when we can,” Esha suggested. “It's a small gesture but well, everything is, to a holy being.”</p><p>Atarangi looked away through the bamboo, to the glimpses of smoke blackening the sky. “That can be part of our next supply trip. But I don't think we'll have good fortune at the market right now.”</p><p>“I'm not showing a nameplate on this plateau again. Those guards know me as Esha now, it's too great a risk.”</p><p>“Then ... There's nothing else for it: we'll keep ascending. From here, it's around twelve kilometres to the mountain's face?”</p><p>“Closer to fifteen,” Esha guessed. Rice was an immense plateau in all ways. “But Rice sends a lot of its goods upward. We shouldn't have trouble finding a spire pass once we do get there.”</p><p>“Work under clouds and rewards will rain upon us,” Atarangi said. “There's our itinerary for the days ahead, then.”</p><p>Past the cedars and over gumgrass, they found the mountain-bound dirt road and followed its guide.</p><p> </p><p>They weren't walking long before an orange wisp appeared in the high distance, sailing over Millworks Plateau's iron-girded edge. Rooftop came to them, arrow-straight and faster than mere travel.</p><p>“<em>Kin,”</em> he cried urgent, “<em>kin!” </em>He landed stumbling on the wheeled pack, crests flared stiff and chest heaving. <em>“( ) felt ( ) earth-shaking, are you ( )?”</em></p><p>“We're fine,” Atarangi said in a leafy voice — while Esha hurried to get thistle stem from the wheeled pack and chew the green from it. “Completely unhurt. It wasn't a severe earthquake in the place we were standing.”</p><p>“<em>That gives me scarlet-relief. But the deal has changed! My phoenix-acquaintance—“</em></p><p>Rooftop gestured along with the word <em>acquaintance,</em> a fluid circling of his neck; the meaning was enormous but it was gone before Esha could push lungta toward it.</p><p>“—<em>will break the song-flower kuh-kree before you arrive.”</em></p><p>“What?! No!” Without resin encasing it, the lungta-rich orchid flower would disintigrate within a day — if the backstabbing wretch bird didn't eat it first. “She can't, she hasn't let us speak!”</p><p>“No offer seemed to tempt her?” Atarangi asked.</p><p>Crests folding, Rooftop turned his eyes to the ground. <em>“I wanted to greater-try. Then came the earth-shaking, and I was black-fearful for you ...”</em></p><p>Atarangi scratched his ruff feathers. “I'll take your love over your duty, my friend.”</p><p>“<em>You are un-hurt, too, Precious One?”</em></p><p>Esha spat a sigh as they dragged the wheeled pack back into motion. “I'm fine, but it won't matter if I can't get the khukuri back. Yaah, Rooftop, I'm sorry — I didn't mean it that way.” His fallen crests made him look sad as a rain-drenched yak and it dug at Esha's heart. “But ... there must be something she wants more than my khukuri!”</p><p>A keen slipped from Rooftop, one that meant nothing more concrete than unease. Esha and Atarangi turned, startled, to him — and Atarangi looked distant as ice, chilled by the thought of Rooftop withholding from her.</p><p>“Did she kin-forbid you?” Atarangi asked.</p><p>“<em>Yes, yes, she did! I blue-soak with regret, Morning Sky — she wants no one but phoenix-kin in her territory, and no one to know her affairs.”</em></p><p>Her jaw setting, Atarangi faced forward. “We'll stand at the edge of her territory, then, and do what we can. I've convinced such mute stones to speak to me before.”</p><p>By the first stretching shadows of sunset, they were hooking their cargo into a pulley rig and hauling it halfway to Millworks. Esha breathed hard and she could still feel the shape of her own cartilage past the tsupira's soft numbness, but she would claw her way up onto Millworks before she slept again. That was a promise, to herself and to her allies.</p><p>As Esha stepped onto the first steel spire, she noted that she hadn't seen one familiar brick wall, or rice paddy, or leatherworker frowning downward at her, dismayed. Her second time on Rice had gone as well as could be hoped for.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Climbing spire passes did not get easier with practice. Atarangi had a little more tsupira to give but the herb couldn't stifle everything.</p><p>Night had thoroughly fallen by the time Atarangi rounded Millwork Plateau. With Atarangi's hands locked around hers, Esha pushed up the final step and staggered onto Millwork Plateau, each pace a barbed hook through her knees. She cried out, then bit back her voice as she sank down and sat.</p><p>“Esha?”</p><p>“I just need air.”</p><p>She hunched there, gasping, as the world whirled before her. With each breath she tore inward, the movement slowed. Soon, the only thing whirling was sky's lungta floating in silvery flakes past her nose.</p><p>“Rooftop, check for guards, if you would.”</p><p>“At this hour, won't find any at the worldedge. They'll keep to the towns. Worst we'll run into is a ranger.”</p><p>Atarangi hummed light. “I won't dig up any more fineable offenses, then.”</p><p>Breathing was trouble enough; Esha didn't need to be snickering.</p><p>This high up Tselaya, the wind nipped cold. Pines and cedars stood only as tall as a low-caste's shack roof but their needles looked verdant even in the moonlight, nearly luminous with high-altitude lungta. Esha would have to consider a cup of pine bud tea while she was near the opportunity.</p><p>She and Atarangi trudged eastward, away from the edge's whistling air and into dappled forest shadow. Rooftop flitted ahead, his bobbing head searching out whichever unseen lines they had to avoid crossing.</p><p>“Ah,” Atarangi said. “There's phoenix sign.”</p><p>Esha cast her gaze around at the brown-needled ground, searching for phoenix shit.</p><p>“No, <em>above</em> us. That bundle — see it, in the top of that yunan pine?”</p><p>Where Atarangi pointed, one forked branch of the pine tree did hold a tube shape — like sticks or stems bundled together.</p><p>“That's phoenix sign? How can you tell?”</p><p>“There's something looped around it — yankvine, most likely.”</p><p>Esha squinted: the tail end of something swayed in the wind. Atarangi must have had eagle's eyes to match her beak.</p><p>“When an item is hidden up high and marked with a knot,” Atarangi explained, “it belongs to a phoenix. Something too large to carry around in their stringfeathers, or simply something they've gathered for later.</p><p>“Yaah, that's something I've never seen. I'm more often looking toward my feet, though, I suppose.”</p><p>“It's not a custom known to many humans. Just the ones who try to listen.” Atarangi's voice was worn but soft. “We should keep on: our dealmaker won't like us appraising her things.”</p><p>After too much more walking through the dark, under the glaring moon, they reached a place Rooftop's approved of: a stand of cold-withered cedar saplings with the ground picked clean beneath them.</p><p>“<em>This place is beside phoenix-acquaintance's territory,”</em> Rooftop said. “She will allow this, I think.”</p><p>“At this moment, I don't care,” Esha grumbled, digging under fuel sticks for her blankets. “Today's been too long.”</p><p>They made token discussion of whether to cook dinner. As if with one mind, Esha and Atarangi produced their remaining scraps of popped maize and leftover onion chapatti: that would hold them until morning. They shared between each other's hands and Rooftop's plucking beak. Then they strung their tents from the stunted cedars and went to bed, separated by one arm's length of rustling tarpaulin.</p><p>“<em>Feels strange,”</em> Rooftop whined from inside Atarangi's tent.</p><p>“What does, my kin?”</p><p>He croaked a blurring range of colour words. <em>“Feels strange, that is all. I think I am brown-wilting tired.”</em></p><p>“Be surprised if you weren't,” Esha said into the crook of her arm.”It's been a blessed experience spending time with you both but don't take offence: I'll be glad when we finish dealing with the damned thief.”</p><p>“Esha ...” Atarangi hesitated, labouring to collect a thought. “You've taken great strides in this journey. I thank you for all that you've tried to understand, but still — please, <em>please</em> don't call her a thief when we meet.”</p><p>“That's what she is,” Esha sighed, “but I know. I'll hold my tongue. They're your negotiations — and heaven knows speaking is a mathematical art. I still say that she stole from me, though, whatever her reasons are.”</p><p>“<em>Our wild-acquaintance has many reasons,”</em> Rooftop offered.</p><p>Bitterness rose in Esha's throat. “All thieves have reasons.”</p><p>Rising at dawn was miserable as any hangover, but the thought of breakfast spurred the three of them to work. They grabbed up dry pine twigs, and dry-rotten hunks of fallen logs, and cones long since picked clean of their seeds. The fire cracklingly devoured all the pine resin, sending up sparks like lungta returning to heaven.</p><p>“I never thought I'd be putting tree wood onto a fire,” Esha said. “Smells good, though.”</p><p>“It's like a natural-grown stick of incense, in a way.” After pouring their remaining water supply into a pot of dry millet and lentils, Atarangi put the pot in the flames and sat, staring daggers at its lack of boiling.</p><p>Then a voice rang from the trees — a phoenix's accusing shrill.</p><p>“<em>Kin?”</em> Rooftop took flight toward it. Esha had no lungta to translate with but he cried patterns that meant <em>yellow</em> and <em>red </em>and<em> friend</em>, she could tell that much.</p><p>The other bird had nothing so kind to say. It sat hackled, rust-orange feathers standing like spines, eyes as hot as hate. Esha knew those eyes — and as this bird scraped accusations at Rooftop, Esha was sure this was her thief.</p><p>Rooftop shrank before her, but he protested – <em>azure</em> and <em>mistake</em> and <em>night-time.</em></p><p>Atarangi was digging through the pockets lining her cloak, chewing hurried. She put betel shavings in Esha's hand — belated but appreciated — and went to the phoenixes with her face turned skyward. “Acquaintance-kin, dawn yellow to you. Please take our apologies.”</p><p>The thief whipped her stare onto Atarangi, head tilting by a slightest degree.</p><p>“We three group-kin have black-withered regret. All sun-white yesterday, we ascended without wings and walked bamboo-green-striving. searched for phoenix-orange-lines and saw beige here.?”</p><p>Emotions flickered in her three crests. <em>“You speak with truth hues.”</em></p><p>With a smile like catching flame, Atarangi signed, “I can, yes. I speak with human kin and phoenix kin, to help both live at peace.”</p><p>“<em>Phoenix-kin,”</em> Rooftop said, <em>“it would aid you to take my humble-green request. Speak with my ally, this human. She is my kin; we are one flock.”</em></p><p>The thief phoenix stretched to full height, feathers bristling like an old brush.<em> “Humans are </em>not <em>my kin: none contain the true-blaze-orange of phoenix-kind.”</em> She placed her glare brief on Esha. <em>“And this human, the stupid-minded one with a tall head — I will not rescind the trade to her. You tall-monkeys are not welcome in my territory. Time is flying away; don't white-vex me.”</em></p><p>Atarangi was speechless, mouth working. <em>“Please, kin—“</em></p><p>“<em>Leave this territory! I brown-rumble-warning: I will set fire to it! Truth free me!”</em></p><p>She exploded into the air on beating wings, and was gone.</p><p>This was what Esha had always imagined, when she thought of human diplomats offering reason to phoenixes. She imagined spite as hot as stricken sparks, spat from a creature too small-minded to see reason. It was a stale and familiar bitterness, as Esha looked to Rooftop: he only creaked his unease, and shifted his crests like a frown.</p><p>Heaving a sigh, Atarangi pushed herself off the ground. “Set fire to this ground if necessary ... Graces forbid.”</p><p>“Is she bluffing?” Much as Esha had learned about phoenixes, they did still strike fires and let them burn: Esha had seen smoke at field edges and run toward it, she had seen elder fieldworkers with burn scars like bunched yarn on their hands.</p><p>“Phoenixes don't just set their whole territory alight, that would be sinking their own boat. When territory lines shift or when a patch of earth isn't growing productive plants anymore, phoenixes start controlled burns to enrich their land with ashes. Or sometimes to intimidate a predatory animal — rare times.” Head shaking, eyes distant, Atarangi said, “This isn't just a failed deal. This would be like if you offered me Gita's property token and I didn't like your terms, so I set all of Yam Plateau afire.”</p><p>“I would be ... crazy?”</p><p>“<em>Desperate.</em> Our dealmaker isn't telling us something. But,” and Atarangi glanced soft to Rooftop, “we already know that.”</p><p>Still sitting in a low-towering pine tree, still meek all over, Rooftop fidgeted.</p><p>“Regardless, our negotiation partner is unsettled by our presence here. We need to move.”</p><p>“Right now? Can't we eat first?”</p><p>“A small and bitter seed can grow vast roots. Help me pack, Esha.”</p><p>They moved half a kilometre to a stream bank, a clear, rock-bottomed flow that sprang from the mountain's face instead of from any skythread. They were placing stones for a fire pot when a handful of labourers arrived with washing pails; with no hesitation, Atarangi insisted on moving a third time, to put a screen of trees and scalebushes between them and any prying eyes.</p><p>By the time they got the millet and lentils boiled enough to eat, the sun had climbed high and Esha was considering grazing on gumgrass instead. She got her human meal but here was no time to savour its taste. There was fuel to be gathered, if Esha wanted to save any bamboo to sell.</p><p>There were few young bamboo stalks on this plateau, however: Esha saw mostly old growth as thick around as her leg. Excellent for burning, although she didn't look forward to blistering her hands with so much chopping. Esha kept on — and she hadn't walked more than twenty metres from the camp site before a strange-shaped bulk in the treetop caught her eye.</p><p>“Atarangi, is that another phoenix trove?”</p><p>“It is,” Atarangi confirmed, once she joined Esha and stared upward. “We haven't entered another phoenix's territory, have we, Rooftop?”</p><p>“<em>No, no. This trove has the same knot-tying owner.”</em></p><p>“You can tell?” Esha asked.</p><p>“It's a clear distinction if you look at enough knots, yes.”</p><p>Curious though she was, Esha didn't ask. She only wondered how birds tied knots that could possibly be distinct, and whether her own knots looked like they were tied by a fieldwoman's hands.</p><p>“Strange to see two troves spread out like this,” Atarangi went on. “A single wild bird doesn't typically scatter their things so far. She <em>is</em> a flock of one, isn't she?”</p><p>Arriving on foot beside her, Rooftop shrank, his feathers tightening close even as his middle crest lifted determined. <em>“Maybe I can quiet-blue share with my human kin. Just one truth-ember.”</em></p><p>“Any direction you can give me, friend. I know this is violating your rules.”</p><p>“<em>She ... My acquaintance-kin ( )—“</em></p><p>He made the circling neck gesture again, some description that didn't match a phoenix's looks at all.</p><p>“—<em>needs to forage-gather and provide. She is a flock of two.”</em></p><p>Odd phrasing even for Rooftop, Esha wondered. But as she watched Atarangi's illuminating expression, Esha soon understood.</p><p>Phoenixes, Atarangi went on to explain, laid one egg at a time. Occasionally two, but nearly always one. When the world was kind to them, the parent birds lived together in a territory, taking turns minding the chick and minding the food plants around them.</p><p>They didn't have nests. That was why Janjuman workers never found phoenix nests in the fallows or in their chopped bamboo. If Esha ever stumbled upon a phoenix nest, it would be merely a parent bird posturing over a pile of sticks — to distract from the flightless chick secreted somewhere nearby.</p><p>The chick didn't get a nest, Esha asked? Phoenixes didn't give them homes?</p><p>What did they need built homes for, Atarangi replied? They had the sky and the earth around them, layered feathers for warmth and the love of their kin.</p><p>That still sounded like a lack of walls to Esha, but she minded her tongue.</p><p>The trouble came, Atarangi went on, when the parents grew too bold in their food-gathering. Sometimes, Atarangi was called to fields for a troublemaking phoenix, and what she found was a phoenix with eggs, or chicks, or wing-broken kin to care for. Sometimes, the farm didn't call an animist but an archer.</p><p>And that might well have left a lone phoenix raising her chick, spitting spite at humans. This wasn't a known fact but it was a possibility among all else. Maybe the thieving dealmaker was an opportunist even in plentiful times — but they needed to consider that this phoenix was primarily interested in feeding her child. No one could be blamed for that.</p><p>“Weigh all this carefully, Esha,” Atarangi said. She rubbed her face under the mask's edge, her voice roughening with use. “All of these customs still don't fully account for our dealmaker's behaviour. She's stealing from humans, and storing troves within her territory, and burning hot at my requests to talk. That's the behaviour of a phoenix straining to feed five or six kin, not one.”</p><p>Toward the end, among all her uncertain feelings, Esha noticed that Atarangi had explained everything. Rooftop sat listening to the lesson on phoenix parenting customs: he didn't say one confident word.</p><p>They adjusted their food-buying plans, while following the orange flags and brick-paved road that led to Millworks's market.</p><p>“I'll see about wild foods,” Atarangi said. “You may use the pack. Would you indulge me and buy some rice, Esha? We'll be beside a river until this negotiation is settled: there's no need to gird yourself with millet lungta.”</p><p>“If it's on your coin, I'll eat anything.”</p><p>“That's a fine attitude,” Atarangi beamed, counting rupees out of her purse.</p><p>The rice merchant was easy to find here, his wares mounded gleaming in the light of brass lanterns. At the sight of his square, Ghyeer-blooded jawline, Esha took a sliver of betel from a guard-watched hospitality table. Then, with lungta-wrapped Grewian, asked the rice merchant if he would trade for fuel.</p><p>“For a traveller, I will,” he replied in Grewian, warped by his accent but intelligible. “Whole rice or polished?”</p><p><em>Whole</em> nearly came from Esha's lips on force of habit. The rare time she indulged in rice, she wanted every mote of bran left on it, the better to keep her stomach fill. But she caught herself: rice hull was more useful to a field worker than to a noble. Atarangi likely wanted a whole meal of tongue-loosening polished rice — and gods only knew which one a phoenix preferred.</p><p>Esha decided, “Half of each, please.”</p><p>The merchant scaled rice, and bagged it in kilogram portions.</p><p>Past the liquid rattling of pouring grain, Esha heard a female voice intoning earthquake — from the incense stall nearby, stood out from them.</p><p>“It's only that,” she went on, “if I can't make an offering tonight...”</p><p>“I have no more juniper,” the merchant blurted. “My apologies.”</p><p>“None at all?”</p><p>“I can't keep juniper on my table. All these earthquakes ...” A rueful pause. “Arbiters say the earthreaders are working on a new timetable formula whatsit.”</p><p>“The priests told us to burn juniper and pray. I'll keep to that. Do any of the other merchants have juniper — even one branch?”</p><p>While unloading bamboo sticks for the rice merchant to claim, Esha recalled seeing juniper near the river's shore, its steel-green branches hiding in the lee of a rock outcropping. She gave silent thanks to the stranger for such a suggestion: invoking the gods might do her good.</p><p>She didn't have her clay-brick prayer stand and there was no sense making one for a single use, so Esha arranged river stones into a flat-topped pile. She tucked a sprig of juniper into the top, and wound bamboo leaves and gumgrass into a doll. It wasn't like Esha's home — with high-borne winds overhead and Rooftop beside her, staring fascinated — but the motions still soothed.</p><p>“<em>The juniper stick and the toy-green-person,”</em> he asked, <em>“these are needed? Gifts for your </em>gh-odds<em>?”</em></p><p>“The juniper is a gift. The doll ... That's, ah. Just my addition.”</p><p>“My kin,” Atarangi said mild, “don't bother her. This is a human's truth.”</p><p>As though truth was a solid thing they had carried back from the market. Rooftop gestured silent apologies; he kept watching as Esha brought a burning bamboo twig to light the juniper, and knelt, and sang the hymn of invitation.</p><p>Gods to be present here, she asked with her heart and her voice. Grant her forgiveness for everything, and safeguard the people of the mountain from the earth's violent forces. It was a lot to ask — but while she sang this melody, Esha mustered some faith.</p><p>When it was done, she stayed where she was, kneeling with eyes closed and her breathing flowing steady as a wheel on glass. Peace felt good.</p><p>“Esha. Esha!”</p><p>She shot a questioning look to Atarangi — who pointed, face urgent.</p><p>“Your dealmaker is here.”</p><p>In the thin-growing saplings some fifty metres away, Rooftop stood with the drabber-coloured thief phoenix, speaking to her with croaking sounds and undulating crests. <em>Song,</em> Esha recognized among his rhythmic throat-words. </p><p>Atarangi hurried to her side and held out a containing fist; Esha took stumbling moments to understand and then held out her hand for the contents, a dense round of fibrous green.</p><p>“It's huang qi. Get it down quickly,” Atarangi said.</p><p>Obediently, Esha bit into the cake — and winced at the bitterness Atarangi was entirely right about. It had a green flavour sharp as sewing needles, and Esha wondered about it while watching Atarangi walk measured away from her.</p><p>She stared through him, and started sideways as Atarangi approached, wings poised half-open like she might need to flee.</p><p>“Dawn yellow,” Atarangi said, with lush lungta like rain pattering on leaves. “I am grateful you came to speak with me.”</p><p>“<em>I have no words for you,”</em> snapped the thief.</p><p>“Mm,” Atarangi said mild. Kneeling, her cloak overtaking her shape, she laid something on the ground.</p><p>“I give you a peace-orange-gift: kudzu-plant that a human violet-grey-took from your territory. I give it back to you.”</p><p>Herb sellers in the market must have thought this diplomat odd for demanding Millworks-grown greens. Esha had to agree, in her vinegared thoughts, that returning stolen goods might do a lot to right wrongs.</p><p>“Also,” Atarangi said. “the tool-sliced betel nut is my orange-gift to you. It is lungta-rich and useful for green-warm speaking. By human rules, betel nut is a gift given in yellow moments, and a first step toward becoming kin.”</p><p>The bird eyed the offering with a tilted head, and put her skewering gaze back on Atarangi.</p><p>“The thread-woven cloth is a yellow-gift for you, too. Use it for carrying, if you wish.”</p><p>“I sand-brown accept this. You can't unspeak the tall-headed human's insults.”</p><p>“No. I would like to offer apology, though. We are kin: my tongue is her tongue.”</p><p>“<em>She truth-speaks,”</em> Rooftop chirped. “Take the food, fire-kin.”</p><p>The female spared a glance to Rooftop, her feathers settling marginally. Then she stooped to consider some morsel, maybe a fibre-streaked disc of betel. <em>“An orange light in the dark, I'll give. This, it is good food?”</em></p><p>“Yes, yes! Bitter in the mouth, but a valuable green-tool.”</p><p>“These are my gift to you, regardless of what we hue-speak,” Atarangi said, easing to sit. “But my human kin slime-green-dislikes the deal made between you-two.”</p><p>The thief's crests flared indignant. “It was a deal, green-made and iron-agreed-to. This, why do humans not understand this?”</p><p>Rooftop passed between Atarangi and the other phoenix, stretching to take a morsel of betel. It was a silent wheedling that didn't go unnoticed by the thief bird; she considered him in the moment he tossed food down his throat, and she eyed the offered betel again.</p><p>“My partner was black-rushing afraid for her life, and she misspoke,” Atarangi said. “But let yellow morning wash away night. She apologizes for her untruth.”</p><p>Esha did no such thing, but she held her tongue. The lungta unfurled in her now, adding more scaffolds of understanding to the phoenixes' calls, more expressions among their unfurling head feathers.</p><p>“<em>If your kin speaks untruth, yesterday and this-day, why do you hold flame-bright-kinship with her?”</em></p><p>“Humans make more mistakes than phoenixes. I fix mistakes. This makes me red-valued by other humans.”</p><p>The thief stretched her neck upward like growing bamboo, a considering gesture in the silver light of lungta. And then she said, <em>“Warming in light. But I have few moments to discuss this. My kin need me. Your partner wants her iron-tool back?”</em></p><p>“She does. That iron tool is a precious gift from my partner's family. They put its purple-wordsmithing-song flower into a piece of tree-amber, as an eye-pleaser and a treasure to safe-keep. This type of sharp-tool is very valuable to humans, and my partner cannot go to a peaceful death without it.”</p><p>“<em>Death-bound orange,” </em>the bird muttered.<em> “</em>Krehhh. <em>It is treasure-emerald-valuable to me, as well. Your partner should not offer things she is unwilling to give.”</em></p><p>Atarangi hesitated. Esha could imagine her face, the shifting of her canny eyes.</p><p>“I don't want to take it back for no-trade,” Atarangi finally said. “Will you trade for green lungta-plants? Maybe seeds, or grass-grain?”</p><p>“<em>All of these. Crest-tall piles.”</em></p><p>This was progress: Esha's heart leaped, imagining how many phoenix-high piles of yams she made every day of harvest season.</p><p>“Very well,” Atarangi said, “We will gather for you. May we enter your territory? Only for brief-times.”</p><p>The thief shrilled, a high note as uneasy as her eyes. <em>“In divine-fire's truth, I can't white-stop anything from entering my territory. One demand I make: don't eat my lungta-food.”</em></p><p>“We won't. I honour-bind myself to that.”</p><p>“<em>Kin ( ),”</em> she creaked severe, gesturing a line with her beak that Esha dimly understood as a bamboo piece, <em>“Keep fire-light in your head. Mind my territory lines.”</em></p><p>“<em>Am your kin,”</em> Rooftop murmured.</p><p>Then the thief bird turned her gaze on Esha, seeming like she might deign to speak — but then the moment broke like porcelain and without another word, the thief bird flew away.</p><p>After a slow-drawn breath, Atarangi turned to Esha, her mouth banded tight. “How much of that negotiation did you catch hold of?”</p><p>“Most of it, I think. When the ... the dealmaker phoenix said to keep away from her lungta food, what did she mean? Everything with roots in earth? I was hoping for some bamboo shoots, but if it'd cause another grudge ...”</p><p>“Don't worry — she shouldn't mind a little bamboo missing. But we should leave alone any nuts, fruits and dark-leafed herbs we find.”</p><p>“Your supply will last, I hope? Maybe stop feeding me so much of it.”</p><p>“Mm, I'll need to stop buying so much if this effort is going to last.” Stepping around Esha's smoldering prayer approximation, Atarangi offered a hand to help her up. “But I'm enough like an otter: I've got some tricks.”</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The thought of leaving forest herbs untouched wasn't so strange for Esha: this was a time to realign to honour, a bowed-head return with the low-caste rules she had mostly ever followed. She spent the day cutting and splitting a stand of bamboo, stacking the pieces staggered enough that they might dry. It was routine-grooved enough to be soothing — although scraping off occasional wads of gwara spit was a new addition.</p><p>Atarangi was more ardent, with the wild mother bird in her thoughts. She dug pouches and boxes and vials from the bottom of her wheeled satchel, considering everything with with a twist of her mouth. Once she opened boxes, Esha saw that some of them were hole-aerated and filled with soil and herb seedlings — including some tree-shaped seedlings that must have been dug up wild in the moments Esha's back was turned.</p><p>“Lucky that guards are too busy staring at your mask to bother prodding into your luggage.”</p><p>Serene as water, Atarangi smiled. “I don't commonly carry <em>this</em> much.”</p><p>“Just for this trip? I'm a bad illustration of morals, I suppose.” Esha started. “Wait — what if some ranger comes walking past and cuts the plants here? Or another poaching fieldwoman? Will the dealmaker bird blame us for it?”</p><p>“I can't say where lightning will fall,” Atarangi said. “But all we can do is tell our kin the truth. Esha, we can't pick anything until our dealmaker gives us such permission – not one leaf of anything.”</p><p>“I won't.”</p><p>Atarangi pulled out two tied fabric parcels, and looked them both over. She swiftly untied one, dumped its mysterious contents into her inner tunic, and spread the empty fabric on the ground. She opened the other parcel and spread its contents — small, pale beans — into a single layer.</p><p>“I've got a technique for encouraging seeds to sprout without taking up any ground. Here, Esha — you might like to see this.”</p><p>When she had dampened and cloth-rolled as many beans and seeds as she could — a clever idea, Esha had to admit — Atarangi suggested they comb the forest for foods Clamshell hadn't considered. Roots, fungi, tree sap drawn with their knives.</p><p>“I don't mind learning the lay of this plateau,” Esha said, hobbling at Atarangi's side while Rooftop arced fluttering above them. “It's just that my legs are gone to seed.” At the mutation's end, she would have a goat's cliff-jumping legs, not that they would do Esha Of The Fields any good.</p><p>Humming concerned, Atarangi eyed the movements of Esha's stride. “Pain herbs can't cure it any more than varnish can fix a crumbled wall. I've been thinking — you might use the pack to sit on. The wheels can take well more than your weight, so it might aid you in crossing ground.”</p><p>“Like a cart? Without a beast pulling it — unless I'm the beast?”</p><p>“You said it,” Atarangi laughed, “not I. Any mushrooms, my kin?”</p><p>Perched on a pine branch bowed deep under his weight, Rooftop creaked negative. <em>“No food-mushrooms, no cones. Acquaintance-kin eats green here, I think. And hides green-food, too.”</em></p><p>“Yes, there are more marked bundles,” Atarangi mused. “Look over there, another one! We're on the edge of our acquaintance-kin's territory?”</p><p>
  <em>“You are walking skim-on-top of it.”</em>
</p><p>Atarangi thought, as forest shadows flowed over her. “Let's walk father in — I would like to see how many food troves she has. Only for my own curiosity.”</p><p>“As long as I'm not the only one wondering,” Esha said. Her sense of peace was fading, looking up at a pantry fit for a mid-caste.</p><p>The troves did come thicker as they neared the mountain's face: Rooftop provided a sky's view and identified the things well-hidden from a human's view. Trees and bamboo tops contained vine-wound stacks of kudzu, bundled pine cones, flower buds and berry clusters. There were contraband things, too — a pot of withering pink asters, and lychees, and a great, round melon.</p><p>“She's been stealing from the entire mountain,” Esha said low. “Nobles, traders — she's got a feast. Why does she need our sweat added to it?”</p><p>“Esha,” Atarangi said in the tone that meant <em>find some patience, if you would,</em> “we still haven't heard her entire story.”</p><p>They came to a rock outcropping and parted around it. Esha was so busy thought-grumbling about the extra distance to walk that she nearly missed the silver flash in a bamboo's crowning leaves. Silver metal, and polished brown beside it. Esha stopped.</p><p>“Look there — up in that bamboo. Is that ...?”</p><p>Atarangi's footsteps stopped crunching. “Where— <em>Oh.”</em></p><p>“That's my khukuri.”</p><p>Silence hung but this was no time for Atarangi's thinking and wondering. Esha stood looking at her khukuri, stolen and salted away in plain sight, of all the godsdamned <em>nerve</em>.</p><p>“That's my <em>khukuri</em>,” Esha spat, limping hasty to the bamboo's base. From underneath, the orchid's petals made a plain outline within the sun-lit resin, definitely the Kanakisipt orchid but the thief bird had the cheek to tie a yankvine knot around the handle and call it <em>hers</em>.</p><p>“Esha, please,” Atarangi called, with panic a hot wire through her voice. “Be calm. We're making headway with our dealmaker acquaintance — we'll get your khukuri back by due process!”</p><p>Screw process, Esha thought. She had waited enough, tolerated enough, and her life's savings wasn't going to be the garnish on some gutless bird's banquet meal.</p><p>She unwound her selfrope. She threw it around the bamboo's enormous stalk and pulled taut, and placed one foot against the knob where bamboo segments met.</p><p>“Esha! What are you doing?!”</p><p>Rooftop shrilled the same.</p><p>But Esha was large steps above the ground now, balanced by all the strength she could muster in her legs. Pressing inward seemed to numb the pain in her knees: the lentils from breakfast were an amorphous lungta bracing all her muscles.</p><p>“Esha!” Atarangi shouted below. “Don't do this! By phoenix customs, you'll— I won't be able to ...!”</p><p>Beyond the quivering effort strung through her body, Esha wondered how she would get down. She had never climbed bamboo so high before. Having the khukuri's well-honed blade would help, though: she might drive it into the bamboo stalk and arrest her fall. She could have the Kanakisipt blade again and still have friends' warmth and generosity, she could <em>have</em> her every need—</p><p>A phoenix's scream tore the sky. Nothing like Rooftop's voice and the bird diving at her was the colour of a thief: Esha fisted her selfrope in one hand and shielded her head with the other, slipping by fractions as claws raked her arm.</p><p>Esha knew her colouring and her voice, and with a maelstrom of guilt and anger in her throat Esha spared herb lungta to listen with.</p><p>She couldn't sort out all the shrieking syllables. <em>Betrayed</em> and <em>snake-brown</em> and <em>dishonourable</em> rang in her head.</p><p>“Honour?! You took my most valuable possession! What's left of my <em>life!”</em></p><p>Her grip was numb and failing, her knees' ache rising above the roar of clenched effort. She couldn't see past the livid feathers slapping her eyelids and the thief bird was screaming, "<em>It was a deal, it was a blue-promised deal!"</em></p><p>“I said you could have <em>something!</em> The deal wasn't—“</p><p>The thief's beak flashed and pain seared Esha's face, a stripe she grabbed at with the only hand she could spare. Rope slipped scorching through her other hand; bamboo branches gave way and she was falling, her feet digging into the grassy envelope at the bamboo's base and finding no purchase as Esha stumbled and let go of her selfrope and again, the ground struck her breathless. She hurt and she burned with weeks' worth of impotence, and the thief bird cuffed past her head, probably aiming for Esha's eyes this time but she couldn't see anyway—</p><p>“Wait!” Atarangi called. “Wait, <em>stop!”</em></p><p>Pant legs curtained Esha's vision. Atarangi stood between them, shooing the thief bird back and speaking in desperate Manyori tongue. Esha had space to snatch a deep breath in; beyond her drumming heart, she heard Atarangi switch, stumbling, back into Grewian.</p><p>“Please,” she said, “you can't solve anything with white-cutting anger, you'll both be hurt. Let me negotiate — let me help. Just— Stay where you are. Stay there.”</p><p>Rattling, from her pockets.The phoenix keened, angry and fearful, but that sound faded. A beak took something floral, something that crunched brittle. With shaking hands, Esha wiped hot wetness from her face and she could make out Atarangi's shape feeding the thief from caring-cupped hands.</p><p>She came to Esha next. Produced a pocket-cloth and dabbed more blood from her face, and frowned deep as she pressured that cloth against the still-searing cut.</p><p>“You should be ashamed of yourself.”</p><p>With those plain words, Esha <em>was</em> ashamed. She laid there hurting as Atarangi guided her hand to hold the red-blotched cloth in place. And when a flower blossom was pushed into her stiff-yielding mouth, Esha chewed, though she could only taste copper.</p><p>Atarangi walked away and now, there was nothing between Esha and the thief bird who stood braced, feet splayed and feathers ruffled. She glared still. She was a dishonourable beast who ruined Esha's future and had the nerve to call Esha the sullied one.</p><p>Esha tried to speak and couldn't grasp words. Without Atarangi, she was no force of reason, just fur and dust and bones. She swallowed whatever the blossom was, speaking lungta tingling in her ear canals.</p><p>The balm murmuring of Atarangi's voice was behind Esha now. She gradually noticed another keening sound behind her, a thready and gasping one. Rooftop cried, as frightened as a child but he calmed and went quiet.</p><p>Steady-crunching footsteps, and Atarangi returned.</p><p>“Now.” She sat on folded legs. “Try again. Acquaintance-kin, what words do you have?”</p><p>The thief bird's crests shifted, her glare blazing while she creaked a low and thorny song. <em>“You asked for help-green-given. I gave help. You said I could take any-one-thing, and now you rob my leaf-growing-belongings. Should have left you to dangle blood-struggling.”</em></p><p>“I— That wasn't what I meant when I said you could have <em>anything</em>,” Esha sighed. She shrouded her eyes with a hand and regretted ever leaving her dull-flagged home. “You should have waited for me to say yes, you may have the shining metal thing. I was in danger! My head hurt! Why didn't you give me a moment to think?!”</p><p>Esha heard only her own heaving breathing and the wind around her in the quaking leaves.</p><p>Then the thief phoenix lilted, a cry that carried. <em>“Your orange-rose advice to light the way,</em> <em>phoenix-kin. You vouch for the kin of Hard-Faced Human?”</em></p><p>“<em>I do,”</em> Rooftop said.</p><p>“<em>Big-Headed Human ... She was confused and spoke a bad deal. She makes many mistakes. This is true?”</em></p><p>“<em>White-reckless actions are common in humankind. Red calls; falling-grey answers. Forgiveness is a useful thing to give humans.”</em></p><p>More wind and silence. Esha laid useless as a cold stone.</p><p>“You need the iron tool with the purple-song flower inside?” Atarangi asked. “You can remove our ignorance. We can give you food, protection, kinship — what is it you need?”</p><p>The thief bird creaked, a wavering song that passed through the lungta translation as frustration too pure for words.<em> “I need many-piled things.”</em></p><p>“Wrong has been done from our kind to yours. We must fix it. What <em>is </em>it you need?”</p><p>“<em>Green-( )-food for my chick,”</em> the bird snapped. <em>“Time enough to grow seeds. Endless-many things to trade — I don't have enough gather-piled treasures to keep my territory </em>mine<em>!”</em></p><p>“Keep your territory ...? Someone is trying to take it from you?”</p><p>Esha's eyes snapped open: a phoenix could lose its home, too. Animals roaming the wilds, when and where they wanted, could still lose any valuable scrap they called theirs.</p><p>Through Atarangi's legs, the thief bird turned a needle of a glance to Esha. She stood proud and ruffled, and she met Atarangi's gaze to tell her, <em>“This mountain-flat-place was aqua-( )-green, before. The ( )-( ) are seeking-doing to take my territory!”</em></p><p>Esha pushed her lungta toward the double-gap, toward the phoenix's nuanced voice in her mind's ear. <em>Stalking</em> was all she managed to tease loose. The word meant some hunting beast — but what wild animal would accept a fine-wrought khukuri for trade?</p><p>“And they will take lungta instead?” Atarangi asked. She wanted more to work with; Esha could hear the restraint tethering her voice.</p><p>“<em>I need the purple-song. That means I will not rescind the iron-tool trade, I will slate-hard tear every puking human face on this mountain-land before I give it.”</em></p><p>A hesitation then, a moment where the air hung empty between them.</p><p>“... I feel maroon-pain for you, my maybe-kin.”</p><p>“<em>I have rock-grey-sat long enough,”</em> the thief bird snapped. “The sun sets and my chick's belly thin-empties.”</p><p>Instantly, Atarangi's hands went to her hidden pocket full of lungta snacks. “My food is your food.”</p><p>“<em>Humans can be kin,”</em> Rooftop added, his voice small again. <em>“They can save a phoenix's spark from snuffing. This phoenix blood-red-swears it.”</em></p><p>Atarangi laid her damp cloth on the ground, spread open to show beans and their green-tipped shoots. Then, she took deliberate paces backward, offering the phoenix free space, as well.</p><p>Keening — like a human might grumble — the thief bird stalked forward. She flipped the cloth's corners together with plucking motions of her beak, and picked up the bundle. With a last burning glance at everyone present, she opened her wings and flew away. Away to wherever her nest was — and the gravity pressed hard on Esha now.</p><p>She came to Esha's side, crouching to peer at her throbbing face. “I don't appreciate you inciting brawls, but it's good that we learned a little more about her.”</p><p>Esha put her palms to the dirt and pushed onto her side, the only direction it didn't hurt to move.</p><p>“Having someone to provide for," Atarangi wondered, “makes us all desperate.”</p><p>“But that one orchid won't fill a pinched stomach! She's no cleaning servant, grabbing cold rice from the kitchen! What did she mean, that something is seeking to take her territory?”</p><p>After a press of her lips, Atarangi shook her head. “I'll need to think about how to put it into human words. Give me time to steep, Esha. Speaking of that, come on — let's make some tea.”</p><p>Atarangi cleaned the tacky, cold blood from Esha's face, and spread a paste of herbs onto the wound to burn like splashed cooking grease. Then she wrapped a bandage around all the other fabric on Esha's head.</p><p>“It might scar.”</p><p>Esha huffed. “Least shameful mark on me.”</p><p>They sat silent by fire's coals, holding cups of potent-brewed tea. Esha hoped a revelation would come quickly but Atarangi stared into the flames like a meditation, while Rooftop sat on her shoulder and preened with a nervous intensity. Through the trees, a pig farmer led his snuffling, grumbling animals past and onward, to forage in the leaves: it was a glimpse of the ordinary that made Esha feel like a stone statue, watching life and yet untouched by it.</p><p>“It doesn't make any sense,” Atarangi finally sighed.</p><p>Esha regarded her. “You've translated it?”</p><p>“The ones trying to take our wild friend's territory — she called them ... Our nearest word would be <em>challenger</em>. Something that competes with her on equal terms.”</p><p>Esha hummed. “Small wonder that I didn't understand. More tea?”</p><p>“I'd be grateful.” She held out her empty cup for Esha to take, and ran a freed hand under her mask, over the hidden contours of her face. “Something equal has its sights set on her territory, which is why she took your khukuri as a trade item. It's a bribe, or a payment. Something to give away instead of her land.”</p><p>Brows raising, Esha paused from filling her own teacup. “So humans are trying to force her out?”</p><p>Atarangi bit her lip and released it. “I don't think so.”</p><p>They stood on an edge, looking down into revelation: even Esha could tell that much. She put the teapot down so she wouldn't drop it. “What is forcing her, then?”</p><p>Lifting empty hands toward the sky, Atarangi grimaced. “We've got to consider the possibility that she's not dealing with humans or phoenixes. Maybe another clade of creatures entirely.”</p><p>“<em>Wild-acquaintance needs kin wind-rising under her wings.”</em> Rooftop said. He roosted, neck compressed into his pillowing feathers but he still watched with alert eyes. <em>“If she is too hot-red-proud to tell you, I will. Wild-acquaintance gathers troves of food to pay thinking-creatures. Not phoenix-kind, not human-kind.”</em></p><p>“Something else? Like what?” Oh gods, Esha's thoughts ran in her head like molasses, they would have to talk to pigs, or monkeys, or windsickles, or heavens only <em>knew</em> what.</p><p>“I'm as surprised as you are, Esha.”</p><p>Judging by Atarangi's smile, that was a filthy lie.</p><p>“I were home at the sea's edge – well, we've got plenty of thinking creatures there. Greatsquid, and whales and dolphins, and otters. But this far up Tselaya's heights? Magpies aren't self-destructive enough to challenge phoenixes. Bush monkeys, the ones living in tribes? Maybe — but they would rather make off with something they can already see. Wild pigs have no interest in skybirds. What else is there? The only likely creature I can think of is ... is water serpents.”</p><p>Esha gaped. “Serpents? Are we speaking of the same thing? The deep-water beasts who make people warn each other about hollowhearts, <em>those</em> serpents?”</p><p>“Something like that.”</p><p>“They're demons! Aren't they?”</p><p>Atarangi waved a boneless hand. “Plenty of creatures are called demons. Some of them actually are impure beings. Some are flesh-and-blood just trying to get by. I can't say, Esha — I've never spoken with a Tselayan serpent myself. I've just heard of them living in the water below ground, and knowing what Rice Plateau fills its tiers with ...”</p><p>Still, Esha shook her head.</p><p>“It's only an idea. Something to turn over and look at.” She turned to Rooftop. “I know you're bound by flame's honour, my dear friend. But can you tell us what kind of creature is demanding pay?”</p><p>Feathers rising, he jerked his head — like a tight-snapped imitation of a human's head shake. <em>“No, no. Acquaintance-kin said no speaking about her life-knotting.”</em></p><p>“Mm, it's fine,” Atarangi decided, with a heaviness like clay in her voice. All we've got to walk on is what the dealmaker phoenix is telling us. We'll need to talk more with her.”</p><p>“To unravel her troubles? Why get tied into another negotiation? Just get my khukuri back.”</p><p>“I hope it'll be that simple. How do you manage it, Esha Of The Fields? Selling yams to someone not interested in buying them.”</p><p>Esha waved the question away. “Selling them isn't my duty, you know that. But— Wait, is that what you're saying Atarangi? That this is a trouble beyond my expertise, and I should just shut my mouth and have faith?”</p><p>“Actually, I was hoping you knew how to make a difficult sale. It seemed more likely than you having advanced negotiation training.”</p><p>Esha fell into her memory again, into the white drifts of time.</p><p>“I apologize,” Atarangi said low. “That was an unkind thing to say.”</p><p>With a time-weighted shrug, Esha said, “It's true, though. I don't have any advanced training. Just two years of tutoring. Began in my fifth summer. Basic ideas, simple phrasing patterns to use when asking for things we wanted. What it means to have respect, and show that respect in polite speech. And we began learning to see another's viewpoint in my eighth summer. The scholar said it was like looking at another mountaintop away in the mist and thinking about if we were standing on that mountaintop, how cold the wind might feel. Or perhaps that mountain would be warm instead. I thought about that a lot, for a while.”</p><p>“That day the scholar spoke to you: was just before you changed castes?”</p><p>Esha gave a shard of a gone smile. “The day before. That was the last aphorism I was given, the last coin in my hand. Think about how warm the wind might be if I were somewhere else.”</p><p>“Think on this,” Atarangi told her. “The dealmaker phoenix has cold winds of her own to endure. You're right that we should try not to be dragged into someone else's debate. But I don't snatch and run, Esha. That's a fine way to make enemies.”</p><p>Sighing, Esha nodded. “I'll cut fuel for you. I can do that without needing to walk overmuch, and without opening my mouth. Just have to watch out for hollowheart bamboo ... “</p><p>Atarangi hummed her agreement. With a last glance run over Esha, a glimpsing of the things buried in a sun-worn woman, Atarangi slipped into her bedroll and faced the dark wall of her tent.</p><p>Rooftop shifted on his bony feet, looking more alone than he had all day. He tipped his head at Esha. In the firelight, his gleaming eyes nearly seemed to understand.</p><p>“Rooftop,” Esha said, soft as shadow. “Come here.”</p><p>He obliged, stringfeathers a dragging murmur on the grass, warmly relief in his fanning crests.</p><p>“When I pulled that tick off my leg and gave it to you ... Is that what made you decide that we were friends?”</p><p>He chirped, crests low to his head. <em>“Food tastes good when human hands are feeding me. But it is more flushed-yellow than that: kin share.”</em></p><p>“What if ... What if I share a meal with her? We gave her a phoenix meal but ... we've got a Grewier meal ready to be made.”</p><p>Rooftop reached out ginger, to take Esha's sleeve and tug it with a gentle beak. <em>“That would be a warm-light beginning.”</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When they next boiled a pot of breakfast millet, they boiled extra and laid it out to cool, and topped it with curried cabbage left out of the reheating pan. Wild phoenixes hated to burn their mouths, Atarangi said: even Rooftop liked his food better lukewarm.</p><p>Once the millet's white steam dwindled to nothing, Rooftop flew away to find the dealmaker. Breakfast passed unspoken between the two women, interrupted by their only spoon scooping more radish pickles into one bowl or another — and as Esha and Atarangi put last pinches of grain into their mouths, two bright phoenixes returned.</p><p>The anticipation might have been too strong, so that even a human-hating forest bird knew the cloying feel of it. With a jab of a look to Rooftop, the dealmaker phoenix paced over to the camp site as awkward as if she had never walked before and aimed a glare into her bowl.</p><p>“<em>This pale-mash is lungta-food?”</em></p><p>To her credit, the churlish beast was easier to understand today; she was either extending her own lungta or choosing her rude words carefully.</p><p>“It is food,” Atarangi said, wearing calm and speaking with abundant leaf-rustling. “This is millet, one of the grass-grains humans grow. It doesn't look like green-nourishing food, but we eat it often. The lungta is good for holding water inside a red-living body.”</p><p>Crests working, the dealmaker stared more at the millet and harder at Atarangi. Esha, as well. Esha got a generous portion of the bird's accusation.</p><p>Esha rose with a huff. “I didn't poison it, if that's what you're thinking.” Hobbling around the campfire — more crippled than ever after her bamboo-climbing foolishness — she took Atarangi's empty bowl on her way.</p><p>“Esha—" A pause, and Atarangi went on evenly, "No one <em>poisoned</em> it. This is our gift we give to you.”</p><p>A pause hung. Esha took a handful of sand and started scrubbing.</p><p>“My kin ...?”</p><p>Rooftop trilled agreement. Imagination painted the sight of him bobbing to the wild bird's side, tossing a bite of her millet down his throat and then beaming at her, utterly benign.</p><p>Quietly, the dealmaker creaked to Rooftop, sounds that nearly whisked away in the wind before Esha could glean meaning from them. Discussion of <em>seed-food</em> and <em>grass ripe-tops</em>, and the question of what phoenixes might call this foodstuff other than Rooftop's throat-rolled <em>mih-rr-et</em>.</p><p>It was pleasing, Esha had to admit, hearing confirmation that millet was a worthwhile food. It wasn't as esteem-wreathed as rice but Esha would have had many weary, dry-mouthed days without it.</p><p>The wild phoenix tilted her head, considering the millet offering with dark eyes. She bent, and selected a morsel between the tweezer points of her beak. And when she swallowed that and felt no death stealing over her, she took a more generous clump and gulped it down.</p><p>“<em>Yielding-soft but substance-brown.” </em>She tried another mouthful, testing it between tongue and palate before she gulped.<em> “This, I will say: you have skilled control of fire.”</em></p><p>Esha and Atarangi stole glances at each other, and both stifled hopeful smiles.</p><p>“Will you join us for another meal tomorrow?,” Atarangi asked when the last grain left the bowl. “We cook with fire every early morning and every late afternoon.</p><p>The phoenix hesitated, crests shifting in a wordless din of emotions. She stood one-legged with a lump of millet caged in her raised foot — a bite for her chick to sample.</p><p>“<em>Maybe I will. Time will rise and set.”</em> And she turned toward the forest, hesitating before she took to her fanned wings. The mouthy thief phoenix flew away from them but this time, Esha was nearly sad to see her go.</p><p>It had to be because no one fed this phoenix. She worked and hunted and feared for her future; no one had proffered fuel for her own fire until now. Esha couldn't grudge that.</p><p>“We are making progress, I think,” Atarangi said. “Betel is starting the conversation and millet is carrying it onward.”</p><p>The next day's breakfast was much the same. Esha and Atarangi portioned millet and lentils into four bowls, with one portioned first and left to go cold. Rooftop left and returned with their wild guest. The dealmaker didn't have any insults this time, just the same gait like her feet were glued with reluctance.</p><p>“These are lentils,” Atarangi explained. “They're filling, a red-strong food despite their green looks. Good lungta for running, or flying I'd imagine.”</p><p>The birds discussed lentils quietly amongst themselves; Esha and Atarangi pretended not to listen. The dealmaker untied Atarangi's cloth square from her stringfeathers and bundled two beakfuls inside — <em>“For my chick,”</em> she actually admitted this time.</p><p>While she pulled a new knot tight, Rooftop trilled for her attention. He drew a gift from his stringfeather and offered it — a sliver of bamboo. Just like the one he had offered Esha such vast days ago. Of course Rooftop would be the one to offer a clear statement of friendship, with his infectious joy and his uncomplicated heart.</p><p>The dealmaker bird stared at it, catching her crests before they flared. She stared, and couldn't even answer Rooftop; she simply left again.</p><p>Her red-brown wings were flags of cowardice, disappearing over the cedar tops.</p><p>Esha sighed and dropped her handful of scrubbing sand. “Gods' tits, why do we bother?”</p><p>“That wasn't a refusal,” Atarangi said — in a faltering tone. “Not completely. She's still allowing us in her territory, and approaching for food and discussion. She's even putting human-prepared food in her chick's mouth . If she was truly rejecting Rooftop's offer, she'd have voiced her offense. Seems like such is her way ...”</p><p>“Then what else can we do?”</p><p><em>“Leaf-food makes a better apology,”</em> Rooftop said.</p><p>If Esha were offended, she supposed an expensive gift would quell her, too. “Well, shall I cook some leaf food, then?”</p><p>Atarangi smiled like the gift was really for her.</p><p>Esha asked Atarangi to go to market for minor things, kitchen things. Rice vinegar and salt; cabbage and mustard greens; an array of seeds and vegetables. A proper meal — whatever that fragile phrase really meant — needed more pickles. Medleys of flavourings and spices. There wouldn't be enough time for them to ferment but Esha knew some wiles to make meals ready faster.</p><p>“She'll have questions about what's in this food, I'm sure,” Atarangi said. “I'll try to answer them. She'll appreciate all the lungta foods, I'm sure.”</p><p>“She should.” A smirk pulled Esha's mouth. “I've used some of the same spices as seasoned the feast on Accord Plateau, after the peace talks. Did you hear of those?”</p><p>“I did, even before I had my sigil! We heard news of the peace talks on the Manyori islands, although the rumours had been travelling long enough to grow stale.”</p><p>“We heard about it in the fields just two days later. The arbiters corrected some of the rumours, but it was still a feast we all envied.”</p><p>“When I was trusted enough to enter the Kathumishru Library,” Atarangi said, “the first precedent I searched out was a copy of the Accord Plateau peace talk summaries. One scribe wrote that those negotiation feasts were the most sumptuous ever seen below heaven's clouds. It sounded like a fine way to make allies.” Atarangi paused. “You might say that right now, Esha, you're offering this phoenix such a peace talk.”</p><p>She watched her own black-nailed hands mixing pickles. Under her softening fieldwork calluses, the carrot coins and the sesame oil felt like old times. “I suppose you're right.”</p><p>“I'm proud of you, Esha. You're a different woman than the one I met."</p><p>She squirmed and tossed the pickles. “It hasn't been so long.”</p><p>“No, truly.” Honesty lumped in Atarangi's throat, before she confessed. “I considered turning you in.”</p><p>“What? To guards ...?!”</p><p>“To the Yam Plateau rangers' guild. Maybe to your farm's overseer.” She looked weakened by this truth, drained of colour under her tattooed stripes. “After the things you had done, I considered whether more good would be done turning you in and using the reward to expand my efforts, maybe move a plateau higher. But I made the right decision, Esha.”</p><p>It was a sobering thought, here while Esha looked at the deep-bent shapes of her strange knees under her clothing, while she felt the backward counterweight her horns made against her neck's motion. She wondered if anyone ever considered turning Gita in for her sins — likely not.</p><p>“I'll take your high praise, friend,” Esha said. “I can try to do some good while I'm here to do it, I suppose. I can go to my mind's end holding onto that.”</p><p>Atarangi wrapped a deeper-hued hand around Esha's wrist, only obstructing the pickling process a little. She was warm. “Fine rope to cling to. Now, what can I slice up for you?”</p><p>Pickles couldn't be rushed, but sometimes the impossible had to be done. They shared breakfast millet with the dealmaker phoenix and asked her to return for dinner.</p><p>Rooftop left camp while Esha wasn't watching him; she heard a clamour of wings while she was bent over the sizzling pan. The two phoenixes returned before everything was ready; their portioned rice and lentils still fountained steam.</p><p>“Welcome back,” Atarangi called. “Please forgive us: the meal is almost fit to eat.”</p><p>The phoenix gave her patience this time. She watched Esha nearly the same way Rooftop did, just holding still and from a more prudent distance away. When her bowl was set out, she approached.</p><p>“This is the meal of my people,” Esha began, pouring the last flavour of chutney into a side-bowl barely large enough. “My, ah. Bloodline of humans. Our long-time flock, I suppose. We're called Grewiers. And ... this is the best meal we know. Not the most expensive, not the most stuffed full of potent herbs — just the best.”</p><p>With a considering tilt of her head, the dealmaker creaked a thin thinking sound. <em>“These foods, they show such rainbow-gathering. What lungta-foods are here?”</em></p><p>It made for cold rice, having to explain every pickle and side dish before eating. But good food could stand to wait — and Rooftop dove enthusiastic into explanations, and the dealmaker seemed to like the chile peppers Esha had apprehensively decided to use.</p><p>“Those hurt the mouth, but the body-heat lungta is worth a little suffering. I think so, anyway.”</p><p>She wiped sesame oil from her lips, caught Atarangi's encouraging nod, and forged ahead.</p><p>“I've been thinking, acquaintance-bird. It doesn't do a lick of good for us to be enemies. I don't want your territory, or your growing food. You've got a knife I'd like back, and that's all. We should settle that.”</p><p>“<em>I filled with blood-red-despair. Made a reckless dive,”</em> the dealmaker said — freely as poured wine, while studying the glazed shine on her bowl. <em>“Time lifts dark-fog from all things' eyes and yes, yes, I need kin for tying away blue-green pond troubles. If you-three are willing to lend claws, tomorrow and days-after ... We might rescind the trade.”</em></p><p>“<em>The tree-wood,”</em> Rooftop trilled. “His wings unfurled like waving flags, like freed joy. <em>“Give our kin the tree-wood!”</em></p><p>“<em>Patience,”</em> the dealmaker snapped, <em>“more night-blue-calm!”</em></p><p>She fluttered away over a copse of pines. A breath-held moment later, she returned, flapping rapid under the weight of an arm-sized branch. Landing with a thump, she stepped off of her apparent wood offering and tugged her stringfeathers to order.</p><p>“<em>This, a gift for kin,”</em> she said.</p><p>“I'll take this gladly,” Atarangi replied, in the cadence of a song. “And I'll be ready to sun-yellow give back to you.”</p><p>She must have had said this at least five times before, so it did feel like a song to her. This had to be the formal bargain she spoke in neat-rowed fields, to any phoenix who would listen.</p><p>The dealmaker bird paused for another moment, still as canny as ever. Then with a tightening of her crests — a feeling of acceptance, said Esha's lungta, a sighed resignation — she opened a newly mysterious knot in her stringfeather.</p><p>It contained a curled pine branch, fresh enough for the needles to spring immediately open — and allow an oval object to roll out onto the fireside earth.</p><p>The dealmaker took that object in her beak. She held it out to Atarangi — a shell, rough and stony on one side, a pearlescent sheen on the other.</p><p>A moment later, the bird gave the shell to Esha, too. Here was another strange un-gift from a phoenix. This time, Esha knew to return the shell: for all her stormy doubts, she at least knew that Clamshell would want her name back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After another breakfast — and another explanation of the human names <em>Precious One</em> and <em>Morning Sky</em> — Clamshell began showing them more secrets. Kin watched over each other's belongings, after all.</p><p>She landed in a dense-boughed pine a moment's walk from the camp site — and returned to earth with a miniature ginseng sprout in her beak, its snapped stem still oozing. A stone's throw away from that, them to one ordinary-looking cedar among a hundred others — to toss her head toward the kudzu stretching leafy out of a dirt-packed crevice. They hadn't noticed any of these while wandering and fuel-cutting; Esha wondered how many sky-gardens Rooftop had regretfully distracted them from.</p><p>As their secret-steeped team kept on into the forest, Esha turned momentarily back for the wheeled pack: her legs were afire with pain already today but if she had a cart to sit on, she might still listen to the proceedings.</p><p>And after seeing a dozen elusive little garden plots in the trees, Atarangi looked at two cupped handfuls of plant samples and shook her head thoughtful. “I've never seen such clever use of tall-plant tops.... All of your tended-pea-green plants are grown this way, my kin?”</p><p>Perching beside a garlic garden inside a half-rotten cedar branch, Clamshell frowned with her crests. <em>“This is the only way to keep food territories away from enemy theft. Sky protects, cloud-blue is refuge.”</em></p><p>“Is that why you're planting in trees?” Atarangi tried. “Someone is stealing your plants?”</p><p>Clamshell stared at the garlic's green spears like into a mug of rice beer. <em>“Why! Before my egg movement-spark-lived, I readied growing-ground. Burned the unfood plants, waited for the ( )-lungta to rain-blue-drift down into the earth. I earth-planted seeds. This is custom! Care for divine fire, and as yellow deepens to red, divine fire will feed body and being.” </em></p><p>Phoenix fires were grudgingly accepted in wild areas, when they only burned a pittance of gumgrass and brown-mounded leaves. This was a truth Esha knew but had never lived herself.</p><p>“<em>Before any seeds sprouted, my territory lines moved. My earth-wisdom said not here. What can a winged-one do? I heart-gathered kindling orange. I burned more and I earth-planted new seeds. The territory lines moved again.”</em></p><p>She swooped at the ground, claws bared — only to rake up mulch-chunky dirt and fist it in her scaly feet, and fly back to the garlic garden.</p><p>“<em>I puke at circumstance! Blacken-sky-whitely! I've finished!”</em> She patted the soil fierce into place around tender greens. <em>“No more moving. This is home territory; this one will not move again.”</em></p><p>Clamshell flew away, a low, loping flight toward her next miniature farm. Atarangi hurried to keep up, her cloak a shaggy torch-light through the trunks and needles.</p><p>Left peacefully behind, Esha dragged herself upright and balanced on her rusty-sore legs. Rooftop perched in a juniper beside her, watching her every movement like it was his care-laced responsibility.</p><p>“As much as I spit on my lot in life sometimes,” Esha murmured to him, “I'm blessed compared to our new kin. I'd be angry if I had to abandon my home and my garden plot for no plain reason like that.”</p><p>Rooftop creaked sadly, a sympathy echoed in his wilting crests. <em>“Kin Clamshell needs help. Morning Sky can give that help, I yellow-fire-hope.”</em></p><p>“Does she really help phoenixes? Gathering them all into her one home?”</p><p>Rooftop tipped his head, crests adjusting like levelling sand: <em>please explain,</em> he silently said.</p><p>“Aah, what I mean is ... Clamshell's wild territory is big enough to fly around in. She has rangers nosing around in it and mountain cats to watch for, but she can spread her wings and grow any seeds she can snatch. Wouldn't ... wouldn't phoenixes rather be free? Would you rather live in the forest than in a house on Yam Plateau?”</p><p>Cackling mild in his throat, Clamshell followed alongside the rolling pack with wing-buoyed hops.</p><p>“<em>I go anywhere Morning Sky goes. Big human-house, small human-house, it doesn't heart-matter. But Precious One ... </em>Krrrih.<em> We phoenixes follow rules, too. Forest birds aren't free. Clamshell is black-fright-trapped by living here – you see?”</em></p><p>“That's true.” Esha rubbed at her neck and the welling goat hair kept itching. “Sorry. I'm trying to learn all these phoenix ways.”</p><p>“<em>Growing-mounds of learning,”</em> he agreed. <em>“I think Clamshell-kin will teach, too.”</em></p><p>They lagged behind Clamshell and Atarangi, catching up in time to glimpse a new garden in the trees before they were left behind again. Atarangi gave them a regretful smile; she had a far smaller pailful of regrets but Esha appreciated the fact of it.</p><p>“Rooftop,” Atarangi said after another bare meeting, “I'd like you to run a wing errand for me.”</p><p>“<em>Am your kin.”</em></p><p>“Bring herbs from our home reserve. A green-gradient variety, and as much as you can carry.”</p><p>Rooftop bobbed affirmative.</p><p>“And I don't imagine I need to say such, but check that all is well at home. Bring a new report about this trip to the rest of our tagged friends — however much you're honour-able to tell them about Clamshell.”</p><p>Esha hadn't considered it before: in a walled and windowed house, four phoenixes waited for Atarangi. She suddenly hoped for their health, left alone without their human flock-leader or whatever they considered Atarangi.</p><p>“The others are minding our Yam home,” Atarangi explained for Esha's sake. “And they're tending my plants, since phoenixes have such a way with a garden.”</p><p>It was a picture Esha simple couldn't imagine. Not for lack of seeing clever phoenixes — just for wondering where the hell Atarangi grew anything in such a mostly-ordinary Yam home. Rooftop winged away through the rain-darkening clouds, and Esha resolved to ask him where the plants were secreted away in Atarangi's Tselayan life. In her side room, maybe. Or somewhere more clever than that.</p><p>When Esha looked to Clamshell, there was a wondering shine in her eyes.</p><p>“<em>A flock of six?”</em> she asked. <em>“All wing-sure, all white-blaze-blooded?”</em></p><p>“They are,” Atarangi said proud.</p><p>“I've met some of them,” Esha added. “They, aah ... seem like fine birds.”</p><p>With considering crests, Clamshell resettled her wings. She turned one direction on her perch, then another, like her whims were changing.</p><p>“<em>I will show you,”</em> she decided then, a choice spat like relief. <em>“Kin, follow this way. You red-gather and spark-kindle; you should meet my chick.”</em></p><p>Clamshell led them through charred pines with grey soil at their feet, and past rocky sand with stones lancing up, heavenward. Up a hillock's faint-worn path and into a stand of leafless, brown bamboo. There were cut stumps standing knee-high; Esha parked the wheeled pack against one of them before she sat.</p><p>After flying up high and wheeling twice, Clamshell landed and gave a low croak of explanation: <em>“They won't claw-dirt-disturb this place. Green draws green: this is why I chose it.”</em></p><p>With no pause for questions, she faced the dead bamboo and began to sing. It was a creaking-voiced song with a binding beat too vague for Esha to grasp, a line of phoenix words arranged to make a mosiac of a tune. As she pressed her whole head's worth of kudzu lungta, Esha managed to match Grewian to it: <em>beige, cream yellow, honey</em>. All colours — Clamshell was singing a list of colours, more finely distinguished colours than Esha's human tongue could describe.</p><p>Atarangi shifted close enough to clasp Esha's arm, tight with excitement; maybe one of her known languages had the right words.</p><p>Clamshell stopped when her colour-song reached daylight yellow hues. She canted her head, and listened. Whistling answered her — a smaller whistling than any wind could make.</p><p>There in the bamboo's papery base — where Esha had looked two heartbeats ago and noticed nothing — was a squirming bundle of motley brown feathers. A head stretched out, squinting black-glass eyes like its mother's, and at a touch of Clamshell's beak it gaped a seeking mouth.</p><p>This was a phoenix chick, the thing Esha had never seen, never even considered to exist. She might have walked past dozens of these hidden in plain sight. Crafty birds. She helplessly smiled, watching Clamshell chose nuts and greens from her stringfeathers to fill that beak with.</p><p>“Rooftop looked like that,” Atarangi murmured by Esha's ear, “when I first came upon him.”</p><p>That was no cure for Esha's smiling problem.</p><p>They sat, at Atarangi's suggestion and Esha's legs' insistence. Lungta food disappeared down the chick's scrawny throat, gulp by gulp until it closed its cavernous mouth and looked, blinking, to Esha and Atarangi.</p><p>“<em>These two, they are humans,”</em> Clamshell said. She shuffled her feet in the leaf rot. <em>“They are kin of our new ally—“</em> she said with a beak-drawn line in the air, a scribbled approximation of Rooftop's name shingle, <em>“—and the knot tightens now to make them our kin.”</em></p><p>The chick kept staring, and blinking. It looked as bleary as Gita after a night's smoking and gossiping; that thought was plenty warm but it evaporated as feathers lifted off the chick's head. Not full, expressive crest fans yet, but still a question piped in a silent voice.</p><p>“<em>The blood-hot words I said at humans,”</em> Clamshell began, <em>“are sometimes true. Only some humans. Some orange-bind and yellow-sparking-share.”</em></p><p>She picked the chick up in her beak, set it on her back like a shawl too small to wear, and she walked on meticulous steps toward them.</p><p>“<em>This way,”</em> Clamshell said. She sounded more tired, suddenly, than Esha ever had after a day in the fields. <em>“I move him like water, ever-shifting. To withered-dun-brown trees for shelter.”</em></p><p>“That's fine for keeping rangers and plant poachers away from him,” Esha said. “But any person coming to cut fuel for their fire ...”</p><p>“Clamshell, my kin.” Atarangi reached into her cloak and produced herb candies, bittersweet morsels to match her words. “Your son is a treasure and he should live in a verdant-calm home. Please, tell us who these enemies are, and why they want so much lungta.”</p><p>“<em>Water-snakes,”</em> Clamshell said. It burst from her like a cannon shot and hot confession followed: <em>“Water-snakes! They purple-swim under the earth, they watch every wingbeat I make. This land, this territory, they're taking it by fading-cooling sparks!”</em></p><p>That did sound like water serpents, Esha thought. And as she looked at the bamboo stems all around, a shudder flensed down her back.</p><p>“Wait,” Atarangi said, “they're watching your every — They're <em>watching</em> you with their eyes<em>?”</em></p><p>Clamshell bobbed hard. “<em>Water-eyes in holes — they rise from the earth when no-kin watches.” </em>Shuffling, turning to touch her chick's downy head, she added,<em> “Maybe blue-green serpents watch this shelter-gathering, and hear these flame-words ... Redden it. Redden everything, no more silence from me. You-kin will have my truth.”</em></p><p>They scraped a fire pit into the sand and stones, and lit a handful of twigs and green pine; the smoke would guide Rooftop to them. There in a grove of wilted things, Esha listened as Atarangi sifted Clamshell's words.</p><p>She and her mate worked this plateau's wilds, two phoenixes matched like a pair of striking-rocks and just as glorious when they worked fire together. They had seeds and stalks planted in the winter soil, and yearling bushes ready to blossom: a supply of nourishing lungta food for the egg they bore and hatched.</p><p>Until one day, her mate didn't return from seed-foraging. This was a provision of any phoenix's life: flames leaped bright only until they faded.</p><p>“Umber and azure to your heart,” Atarangi said, blanket-soft. “It must be trying, without him.”</p><p>“I can feed my own flame. I could feed my young one with this territory that is mine. But these most recent season-fragments, the earth shakes and the lines move, always moving ...” Clamshell tossed her head low, like a human might spit. “The shaking and the water-flows rearranging — maybe these brought the serpents.”</p><p>Rooftop arrived, crying a dawn greeting as he glided to earth. He was so laden with herbs in his stringfeathers and twine-wrapped shoulders, and burdened by the clay pot of sprouts in his claws, Esha wondered that he had flown at all.</p><p>But all of them, human and bird alike, took a rejuvenating moment to chew shared lungta foliage. When one leaf snapped in Clamshell's beak, the phoenix chick gaped his own .</p><p>“He knows which cart brings his rice,” Atarangi laughed. “Let us mind the little one, kin Clamshell. Please, take some green-bracing food and continue giving us your story.”</p><p>She crest-flexed and considered it. She stuffed a bouquet of green into the chick's mouth. And after a glance around — lingering on Esha too long to be a compliment — Clamshell shrank with resignation. She put her chick on the ground, careful as though he might tip over and break. The moment Clamshell reached for herb, her child stood on scaly, elastic stubs that passed for legs and tottered toward Rooftop. Fine choice of playmate, Esha thought.</p><p>Still watching — always watching — Clamshell ripped and swallowed the green-frilled edges of a pak choi leaf.</p><p>“You think the earth-shaking and water-flowing brought the serpents?” Atarangi prompted her.</p><p>With a drawn breath and a rueful pause, Clamshell kept speaking.</p><p>The serpents appeared first in her waterways, she said. Ponds, and the Millworks's fish-lakes. They stole germinating things from Clamshell's burned gardens — and she related it with her feathers rising, with a hotly returning spite.</p><p>But that was ordinary for a phoenix, to lose a leaf one day and a seed the next. Ordinary to glimpse a sinuous shape in the water's shadows. For a time, Clamshell ignored them and kept her chick well away from water's banks. Soon, the serpents began rising more menacing in her territory — up from the ground.</p><p>“Did they rise near bamboo?” Esha asked: she couldn't contain her need to know.</p><p>“<em>Some cloud-sky times? Yes and no?”</em> Clamshell clacked her beak and kept on.</p><p>“Humans just— We say they rise near bamboo.” Esha resolved to hold her tongue from then on.</p><p>The serpents rose, in any case, and they spoke to Clamshell —spoke in a clicking she didn't understand until she had eaten most of the leaves off a kudzu one day. The serpents wanted her territory. Her land and all its troves. If she left without resistance, there would be nothing for her to fear.</p><p>“Good grace,” Atarangi murmured,”I've never heard of such. Humans pushing phoenixes out, or other birds, but never this. They wanted your lungta reserves?”</p><p>“<em>Steel-grey surely! They came stealing my garden-plants,”</em> Clamshell huffed. <em>“Stealing and stealing until I became red-white one day. A serpent reached for my wing-line-tree, tried to steal! Violet hues toward my wing-line-tree!”</em></p><p>“Ginkgo,” Atarangi added for Esha's sake.</p><p>If Esha had a precious ginkgo tree that someone tried to steal from her, she knew she would defend it, too. Maybe even from an underground beast.</p><p>“<em>So I struck at the filth-snake. Tasted green-blue-foul. The serpent left my tree but they still return. One wears my stricken-mark and all demand in ice-black-colder voices. Give, they say. Give or they will raise water. A purple and metal-strike, that is its nature! Maybe snakes will raise all the water, maybe they devour all land. I worry; I wind-burn because I don't know.” </em></p><p>“Raise all the water?” Atarangi rubbed under her mask, head shaking with the enormity of it. “In your territory? I don't know that a serpent <em>could</em>—“</p><p>“I've heard tell of a serpent large enough to encircle a fieldfellow's house and swallow it whole,” Esha said. “Plenty of stories about their teeth like shovel blades. Nothing about raising water.”</p><p>Humming, Atarangi considered that. “But we can't say for certain. And if they're paid an amount of lungta-plants ...”</p><p>“<em>They will leave my territory,”</em> Clamshell snapped. <em>“They have to. For all the sun-risings and sun-settings in my shine-kindled-life, this land is mine. But I speak this truth greater-leaping now, with my mate in dark-brown and my chick orange-rising.”</em> She looked to Atarangi and to Esha — proud, ruffled and defiant. <em>“Grey, like slate. I dig my claws into this earth.”</em></p><p>In the calm of that thought, Atarangi blew a long sigh through her teeth. She considered Rooftop preening the chick's down into a same-looking mess, and Esha sitting on the things a diplomat could afford.</p><p>“I will try talking to these serpents. Find out what they want of your territory, exactly, and try to negotiate a price you can give without smothering your flame.”</p><p>“Paying them a fair price?” Esha said. The avalanche of stealing and retaliation was growing out of control, far beyond one fieldwoman's portion in life. “Cowshit. All of it. These serpents don't deserve one pine nut.”</p><p>Atarangi held her own opinions behind her teeth, though it looked like they fought to get out. “I'll <em>talk</em> to them. If they speak any tongue that lungta can sift into, I'll bargain the price down — low enough that it doesn't need to include Esha's iron-tool.”</p><p>That was the kernel of this; Atarangi hadn't forgotten. Esha could only nod.</p><p>“Now,” Atarangi said, “where can I find these serpents? They're listening everywhere, I know — but where can I <em>find</em> them?”</p><p>The fire withered away into its own ash while plans were made. Clamshell added pine sticks yanked from a treetop and them lit anew, with showers of sparks from her iron and pyrite; her chick watched, entranced.</p><p>“<em>Small-kept fires make the earth better for seed-nourishing.”</em> she told him. <em>“And they white-hot-frighten our enemies, and call orange-kin to one place. Humans use small-kept fire. Circled grey with rocks. They need the heat on their brown-skin.”</em></p><p>“<em>I light a small-kept fire every day, for Morning Sky to red-hot-cook our food,,”</em> Rooftop agreed.</p><p>They spoke of humans like inscrutable pets, like dogs to be brushed. Esha considered speaking on behalf of her own dignity — but then Clamshell stalked to her side and set the chick in her lap.</p><p>“<em>Precious One, I put my kin in your sight. Have yellow and red twined: vigilance.”</em></p><p>Her gaze turned up at Esha was hot as pouring tin; the chick was weightlessly delicate. Esha agreed, and gathered the soft, brown thing into her nested hands. “You can trust me with him.”</p><p>It was enough to patch over any hate Clamshell still had, because her crest feathers settled to calm. She turned away in a dragging circle of stringfeathers and tied her iron and pyrite back into her possession. The chick would have to get a set of striking rocks when he was grown, too. Esha had never considered it before, where phoenixes' striking tools came from: they seemed like mere facts of being, like gwaras' teeth and yaks' tails.</p><p>With the wheeled pack full of provisions, and a fire's heat, and Atarangi's dagger that would serve better than Esha's snapped excuse for a khukuri, Esha was left there with a phoenix chick to hold. Atarangi left with the adult phoenixes. Off to set some mad precedent of diplomacy that she wouldn't be able to officially report, anyway.</p><p>And with that, Esha was left alone in the forest with a child. A child not hers and not even human. Not that she would have known what to do with a child if it were human — and this, she told herself steely, was a line of thought that needed to stop.</p><p>The chick stared up at her with simplicity in its eyes. With a twitching of budding muscles, it raised crests in what might have been a question.</p><p>Talk to him, the others had said. What did she have to talk to this small creature about? What would any human?</p><p>“Hail,” she stammered to it, with all the lungta she could push out on her breath. “Yaah, I mean, dawn yellow.”</p><p>The chick creaked, one note that the lungta grasped at and couldn't match one meaning to. Maybe he couldn't speak, or didn't want to speak, Esha wondered; his voice sounded like a pump chain too rusty to flex.</p><p>Then, she supposed, maybe he would like songs. Hymns and folk-songs were a language all people spoke, after all. Every Janjuman worker sang the same songs on Rama's Day, even the fieldworkers who needed betel to speak any Grewier at all.</p><p>Gathering her nerve — which was trying to dig down into her gut and hide — Esha hummed a line of her favourite sky-praise hymn. It took the chick's attention, clearly enough: he stretched toward her, like trying to get closer to the music.</p><p>“Well? Good enough?”</p><p>He chirped, chain-rusty.</p><p>Well, then, Esha thought while she retied her sari to better nestle a bird inside. If he liked songs, he was going to get songs.</p><p>The time passed quicker than Esha anticipated. There was ample dry bamboo to be cut for fuel — although Esha tapped careful on each stem before she cut, too fearful to chance a hollowheart. She scrubbed the cookpots until they gleamed clean; she fried chapattis and popped maize for future quick devouring; and she roasted yam pieces to poke into the chick's gaping beak.</p><p>The whole time, every song she knew fell from her lips. It was like she wasn't alone.</p><p>Sunset coloured the sky, warm and heavy. Esha stacked another tower of bamboo sticks while she gave in and sang High Plateau songs.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>If we need to make a plea</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Speak with grace and mindfulness</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With heaven's gifts we pave the way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Each path a mesh of tasteful words</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Better spoken than the rest</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“<em>Sounds like purple-human words.”</em></p><p>Esha choked, and she whirled to find Clamshell standing not a stone's throw behind her, the cunning feather-rat.</p><p>“Gods' <em>assholes!</em> Don't surprise me like that!”</p><p>Atarangi came up the worn path, Rooftop perched across her shoulders. “You truly need to stop cursing in front of impressionable birds, Esha.”</p><p>“Yaah,” was all the response Esha graced that with. “Did you find serpents?”</p><p>“We caught glimpse of one in deep pond-water. Too murky to see how large it really was but I don't believe it could swallow anyone's house.” Atarangi took a chapatti and bit deep into it, as well as holding up cold yam pieces for Rooftop to snatch joyful. “But it showed itself after we called out all manner of hails and offers. You're singing truth, good fieldwoman. “</p><p>Removing the chick from her sari — and missing his living warmth immediately — Esha placed him before his mother's blade-sharp stare. The chick rasped greeting and leaned stumbling into his mother's chest feathers, which blunted Clamshell's staring at Esha only a little.</p><p>“<em>I kindle first sparks of gratitude to you, Precious One. But you sing untruth. Water-snakes spoke black fangs at my territory and they want the food pale-blue-wrenched from my chick's mouth. For them, no grace-voiced bargains.”</em></p><p>“My kin,” Atarangi replied, “Please remember: you might not have a choice.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Atarangi spent another day setting out into Clamshell's territory, flanked by phoenixes. She came back to Esha's hot dinner, weary but bearing plenty more ideas.</p>
<p>The serpents might well be everywhere: they had underground water veins to rise from. Atarangi touched Esha's borrowed spade where it hung on her tool-sash, and told of the wet soil they had found in the places Clamshell recalled seeing snakes' faces. If they squeezed through those muddy passages — to menace a phoenix or to snatch hard-grown plants — they could appear and disappear at will.</p>
<p>“It'd explain why the yankvines grow so plentiful here,” Esha said. “They like deep-drawn water.”</p>
<p>“I <em>have</em> noticed the yankvines. They're woven thick as canvas in some places. Not directly over the water veins, though; that doesn't follow at all.” Humming as she stored that thought for later, Atarangi went on, “But when the serpents wish to speak to Clamshell, they surface in the same particular pond, a quarter kilometre from here.</p>
<p>“<em>When water snakes wish to air-clear speak,”</em> Clamshell added bitter, <em>“or when water snakes black-venom-fill with threats for spitting.”</em></p>
<p>With a regretful twist of her mouth, Atarangi said, “A puddle is better for swimming than dry sand: you're fortunate they'll speak at all to you. I only wish they'd extend such grace to me.”</p>
<p>Esha turned her hands skyward. “They haven't devoured you, or dragged you down into the mountain's depths. That's more than I'd have expected.”</p>
<p>Crests rising tentative, Rooftop plucked at Atarangi's sleeve. “Kin, maybe ...” He cackled to himself, words tumbling untranslateable. “You arrived few days ago. Maybe you are approaching them too rushing-fast.”</p>
<p>“You think so? I might try a wait-and-welcome response?”</p>
<p>“Ah, yes, that could work,” Esha said. “Like on Yam. You're the masked foreigner, folk whispered about you — but now that you're a known presence, farming caste come to you as they need. Actually, I came to you <em>because</em> I needed something strange.”</p>
<p>“Mm, I see. These serpents might be as frightened of humans as other humans are.” Atarangi laughed with the sore truth of it. “Very well. Rooftop, Clamshell, here is our plan for tomorrow. I'll stay back from the speaking pond, and I'll hold my words. Rooftop, you ask the serpent to speak with me. We'll see how we ultimately fare.”</p>
<p>That next day, Atarangi returned with the last gold of sunset and she sank to sit by the fire, limp as linen. Rooftop pressed to her side as though he might prop her upright; Clamshell gazed at her with something like regret before reclaiming her chick.</p>
<p>“How did the plan work?” Esha asked.</p>
<p>“Talked to one today,” she murmured . Even when she spoke hushed, she still enunciated, still the clear and functional words of a diplomat. “You were right, they didn't like me so near to the water's edge. You and Rooftop had the same clever thought.”</p>
<p>“You don't look well, sister,” Esha said. She brought Atarangi rice topped with yam-filled dumplings, leaning on the bamboo pole she had cut for herself; walking was becoming her greatest chore of all.</p>
<p>Atarangi accepted the bowl in both hands. She was quiet for a moment, with the sticky motions of a throat reluctant to work. Wind chattered the treetops; Clamshell trilled with her chick.</p>
<p>“I did speak with the serpents,” Atarangi said. “Never in my life have I needed so much lungta.”</p>
<p>Understanding dawned on Esha, a memory of every bitter speaking herb that had ever tasted like a risk to swallow. “You've been eating the potent ones? Losing the stomach for them?”</p>
<p>Humming answer, Atarangi pinched rice into a round mouthful. She chewed like the rice might betray her, and then shared her thoughts:</p>
<p>“I've never reached my own limit before. The most potent herbs are rare and elusive for good reason, but these next days trying to unwind serpent speech...” She shook her head. “I'll simply need to use as much as I can endure.”</p>
<p>She made it sound like a poison. But then, Atarangi did say that everything was poisonous if a person ate too much.</p>
<p>“What did the serpents say?” Esha asked. “I hope it was worth sickening yourself for.”</p>
<p>“Serpent speech ... It's like three tongues at once. I'm asking them for negotiations and trying to sort out the answers I'm getting in return. They aren't enthused about negotiating, I know this much: they would rather just have the contents of Clamshell's territory.”</p>
<p>“<em>Watersnakes have no morning-orange ears,”</em> Clamshell added. <em>“Only indigo claws.”</em> She was sitting with her chick by the fire, leading him in some knot-tying game with pieces of yankvine.</p>
<p>With a tightening of her mouth, Atarangi gathered another reluctant pinch of rice. “Rooftop. We— We need to understand the serpents' language. Actually understand it with our own heads. I can't eat so much herb every day — particularly the Zhong goldthread, nngh.”</p>
<p>“<em>Tell Precious One! If you move the word ideas enough to teach-tell her, you can teach-tell yourself.”</em></p>
<p>Pinning their hopes on Esha's understanding was a far reach to make; she was still trying to sort out the crowd of meanings every time a phoenix mentioned the colour brown. “I'll listen,” she offered, “but I can't imagine I'll understand much.”</p>
<p>“No, no, it's fine if most of this falls through your fingers — I'll still benefit from the effort of it. Rooftop, that's a well-founded plan, my friend.”</p>
<p>Swelling proud, Rooftop creaked a gleeful sound, then took one of Atarangi's yam dumplings for himself.</p>
<p>“Alright,” Atarangi said, putting the bowl aside anyway, “I need something to scratch with.”</p>
<p>With a stick shaved off from fuel bamboo, Atarangi drew in flat-swept soil for wordless moments. First, a snake shape that Esha expected. Then a multitude of smaller scribblings, lines and waves radiating outward from the snake. Finally, when the drawing looked more like a vine full of leaves than an animal, Atarangi straightened.</p>
<p>“So.” Reaching into a mask eyehole, she rubbed her eye hard as though it was to blame. “This is a water serpent. Humans call them serpents, distinct from snakes such as tree snakes or vipers. The phoenix word calls snakes and serpents one family. But for our purposes, the words <em>water snakes</em> and <em>serpents </em>are two sides of the same coin.”</p>
<p>Esha had gathered that idea days ago. She held her sharpening tongue; the phoenixes all listened intent and there couldn't be enough common words for them to use.</p>
<p>“The serpents,” Atarangi pushed from her mouth, “they speak with their bodies. All living things do. But when these serpents are speaking with sounds, it's ... Well, try to imagine this, Esha: a serpent has fins on the sides of its head.”</p>
<p>“Where is the head?” Esha couldn't look at the lines and see anything but an uprooted yam plant.</p>
<p>“Right here. These fins on the sides of their faces seem to be for expressing broader forms of opinion. A sort of— Like the edges of our mouths. Or a phoenix's sidecrests. But not always. In some cases, these barbels can—“</p>
<p>“The what?”</p>
<p>“Barbels. The whiskers on a fish?” Atarangi made combing motions with her fingers, drawing long shapes away from her tattooed chin. “Have you ever seen a catfish?”</p>
<p>“Not a whole one, no.” Catfish showed up in Janjuman's winter stews, diced as even as anything else. It had a more agreeable texture than most water-meat and that was all Esha knew.</p>
<p>Atarangi nodded at this new burden. And, slowly, she drew a breath that looked like a prayer.</p>
<p>By the time the cooking coals died to ash, Atarangi had taught Esha a bizarre assortment of words for fish and their distinctions. She then touched the bamboo stick to her barbel-faced sketch of a water serpent and grasped at an explanation of their expressions, their gestures, their impenetrably woven ideas. When Atarangi said the serpent tongue was like three languages at once, she meant it: they fin-gestured about their barbels' motions, and clicked teeth to describe their fin gestures, and all of it in what seemed like a wary, wordy tone.</p>
<p>It clashed against everything Esha knew — or thought she knew, in her ever-pivoting life — about water serpents. Creatures who rose from the unseen depths, summoned like demons. Creatures who grabbed the vulnerable and dragged them beneath. Thinking creatures with a body-flicked vocabulary that Atarangi, the most worldly diplomat Esha had ever known, couldn't seem to match.</p>
<p>“Gods help us,” Esha murmured.</p>
<p>“I'll take your gods' help gladly,” Atarangi sighed. “The serpents don't speak any throat sounds similar to human tongues, or phoenix cries. The strangest part is that this braided language isn't what the serpents were speaking to Clamshell, when they appeared to her with demands or threats. They used tapping teeth and an occasional fin gesture: she understood perfectly well as long as she had a little green leaf in her stomach.”</p>
<p>Serpents were ambushing thinking creatures and speaking to some of them in elaborate riddles — only some of them. Confusion twisted Esha's mouth farther. “What does that mean?”</p>
<p>Atarangi was shaping sounds of her answer when Clamshell shrieked.</p>
<p>“<em>Alarm!”</em> She lunged to pick up her chick, before shrieking again: <em>“Water-snake!”</em></p>
<p>“What?!” Atarangi jumped to her feet, scanning the darkness outside the fire's glow.</p>
<p>Esha looked, too, at the pine trunks and the leaf litter standing stark around them but there were no snakes' eyes, no fins.</p>
<p>“<em>Break their wings,”</em> Clamshell huffed, ember-eyed in a tree's shadows, <em>“They black-stalk us!”</em></p>
<p>“Kin,” Atarangi said, “where?”</p>
<p>Clamshell hesitated, claws gripped hard against her perch. She picked up her chick and set him in the fork of the branch — where he settled into the crevice like caulking pitch — before gliding across the camp site, into the shadows.</p>
<p>“<em>Here,”</em> she spat, tossing clumps of dry pine needles with her beak, <em>“here, the water snake was silent-purple watching! It fled into deep-teal-earth when I raised alarm. Puking thugs!”</em></p>
<p>“Clamshell, please.” Atarangi went to her, hands spread as if to hold but hovering cautious. “This is good!”</p>
<p>Huffing, open-mouthed, Clamshell glared sightless into the night. She pecked vicious at the needled ground and with that strike, her huffing began to quiet.</p>
<p>“<em>I would white-tear their eyes,”</em> she said, <em>“I would give green-broad piles.”</em></p>
<p>Clamshell's gaze caught Esha's for an instant before she tore it away, crests deflating. At least she had the grace to feel guilty.</p>
<p>“I know this has been hard, my kin,” came Atarangi's voice of reason. “Fire brace your spirit. But I believe the serpents do warm-wish to negotiate, at least a little. If they didn't, they wouldn't surface at all in my presence. Why would they indulge me if not to talk?”</p>
<p>Clamshell stared more at the unanswering ground.</p>
<p>“I think,” Atarangi said, turning her masked face back to her other kin, “that we should move our fire site nearer to the pond. Fruit close at hand is soon picked and eaten: if we're close by their favoured water source, the serpents will overhear more of our discussions, our turns of phrase. That's never a hindrance to understanding someone.”</p>
<p>“<em>Good thought,”</em> Rooftop said — murmured and meek but not crying<em>. “And we can walk-journey less.”</em></p>
<p>“<em>I will </em>not<em>,” </em>Clamshell spat.<em> “I will </em>not<em> follow. This, it is black-soaked wretched.”</em></p>
<p>“You don't need to follow us, kin. Keep your chick safe. We'll handle this.” She turned to Esha, looking pale under her mask and under the firelight. “Esha? Will you come closer to the serpents?”</p>
<p>“I recall signing a contract that I would aid your negotiations. No sense in refusing now.”</p>
<p>She had signed those papers with a false name, Esha recalled late. But Atarangi smiled anyway.</p>
<p>At first light, Esha limped on both legs by Atarangi's side, the two of them moving camp toward the pond. It was a clay-edged pool at the mountain's face, stretching worldedgeward like it tried to be a river and couldn't manage the strain. Up-mountain meltwater trickled to feed the pool — and between two boulders settled against each other, a tunnel opening led into the wet, reflecting dark. It looked like the sort of corridor that would draw things up from the deep, Esha thought with a chill.</p>
<p>They were laying new hearth fire rocks when tremors began, an earthquake that forced Esha and Atarangi again to their hands and knees. It lasted the span of one held breath but the sound of rocks grinding and settling in the water made it feel all the more powerful.</p>
<p>Their small tribe was well, Atarangi hurrying to help Esha back onto her rickety knees, Rooftop drifting down from his safe cloud cover. The mountain still stood. There was nothing to be done but light a fire and put on breakfast rice.</p>
<p>Esha was gathering sesame seeds and tsupira leaf into a bite of rice when Atarangi hissed — urgent and expressive. When Esha looked, she tilted her head toward the pond.</p>
<p>It looked ordinary at first. Glassy green surface with clumps of floating dust. Wavering reflections of boulders. Lungta drifting into the mirror surface, flecks of blue and gold. Then two points cut through it all — two fin tips attached to something fish-shaped and huge. It drifted near the boulders, whipped to the bottom with a roiling splash, and drifted again. It turned, raising black discs of eyes above the lapping water — then it darted into the tunnel opening, away into the mountain dark.</p>
<p>“Was that ...?” Esha asked.</p>
<p>“A serpent,” Atarangi said. “I may have met that one. Their colour patterns are beginning to look familiar.”</p>
<p>Under a jail warden's duress, Esha wouldn't have been able to say what colour that liquid fish-creature had been.</p>
<p>“<em>That</em> serr-fent <em>saw us,”</em> Rooftop chattered. His feathers vibrated with excitement, his crests high and glad. “<em>Maybe he will return for meeting Precious One!”</em></p>
<p>Esha didn't have anywhere else to be. She kept eating her rice, with her gaze pulling to the empty water.</p>
<p>They didn't have to wait long. The pond roiled with fins within the hour.</p>
<p>And the creature that rose from the water was the strangest Esha had ever seen. Covered in fins and tendrils like a dragon kite, its body rising three metres above the water with a cobra's upright poise, its black pupils round as nail heads. It stood dripping, regarding Rooftop — who stood on the pond shore like a welcoming candle flame — and turned a look to Atarangi and Esha both.</p>
<p>It clicked teeth to Rooftop. A bouncing of its long jaw, white flashing of shovel-blade fangs, and shifts of the spined fins on either side of its jaw.</p>
<p>Esha knew then that she hadn't eaten speaking herb today. Stupid oversight if she was supposed to be understanding. She crept for the wheeled cart while picking words out of Rooftop's door-hinge voice.</p>
<p>“With ( ), my kin sit ( ). They hope to share words and ( ) ( ).”</p>
<p>“( ): more kin?” the serpent clacked.</p>
<p>“Truthfully, yes. This new human woman is named Precious One; she is kind.”</p>
<p>That was a compliment, Esha numbly understood while Atarangi rose beside her. Under her mask, her jaw worked a last wedge of betel.</p>
<p>The serpent's gaze snapped to Atarangi; its fins rose like the hair on a hackling cat.</p>
<p>“Thank you for coming,” she said, her words herbaceous with lungta. “We still wish to negotiate with you.”</p>
<p>The serpent stared. It held still as a varnished statue — until its chin barbels wound together like boneless fingers interlacing, and its fins flickered, and its tooth clicks became a rolling scale.</p>
<p>Atarangi paused — a thinking pause, one that grew fear in Esha's belly because Atarangi had to understand, she <em>had</em> to.</p>
<p>“I ... I don't know. Please repeat that?”</p>
<p>More staring. The serpent didn't move, just loomed wetly.</p>
<p>“That fellow human female,” Atarangi tried, “is Precious One. Her lungta plant was taken by the landholder phoenix.”</p>
<p>Betel nut began conversations, but this conversation with a demon-like snake couldn't be flung open so easily. It was an order of magnitude away from a Grewier speaking with a Sherbu, a challenge well beyond the safe confines of human order.</p>
<p>Then the serpent clicked and fluttered. Something phrased as <em>command</em>, Esha grasped that much.</p>
<p>“I—I can't ...” She let out a string of voiced sounds like a baby's round-mouthed, simple cries. They were nothing like tooth clicks but through Atarangi's panic and lungta, she hit pitches and rhythms. <em>“Question with left side frill? Raised swimfin—</em> Keh, how to say ... <em>Circle-sway brow whisker?”</em></p>
<p>The serpent flicked its largest barbels — dismay, Esha nearly tasted.</p>
<p>Atarangi tried again, another series of pitched notes with her hands flicking wild. And as the serpent wound its body in a retreating circle, Atarangi groaned frustrated and raised a hand, the motion of rubbing under her mask.</p>
<p>The serpent froze. It rotated back toward Atarangi, black eyes searching her face. But as her hand drifted back to her side, the serpent clacked teeth in a harsh song.</p>
<p>“Apologies,” Rooftop cried, “Apologies! Please, water-friends, let me give lungta.” He fetched green stems and shuffle-stepped into the pond's shallows, stretching up toward the monstrous serpent's grasping barbel.</p>
<p>With a ludicrously small herb gift in its grasp, the serpent left. It wound along the mud bottom, fins and fronds rippling down to his fish-like tail fin, until he submerged — next to a second serpent, a quiet pair of fins barely breaking the surface. And they both sank away into the depths.</p>
<p>“Another chance tangled up,” Atarangi sighed.</p>
<p>“You did better than anyone else would,” Esha said. Tale-spinners talked about monstrous serpents, behemoth things that could wrap the mountain's circumference within their coils — but it was more real and more frightening to see that smaller creature and the muscle under its clammy skin.</p>
<p>“It's clear enough I'm saying something wrong. Or doing something wrong, perhaps. Did you see how he hesitated, near the end? Rooftop?”</p>
<p>Bobbing agreement, Rooftop tilted his head. <em>“That water-snake said you could have ... unmade your insult?”</em></p>
<p>“I came close, then,” Atarangi said, “even if by chance. I'm going walking.”</p>
<p>“What for?”</p>
<p>“To think.” Atarangi paused, eyes darting with thought. “Maybe to see about cutting some bamboo shoots. We haven't eaten any lately.”</p>
<p>She left like a duty dragged her, with Rooftop flapping regretful after her. Their little negotiating party was nearing a breakthrough: they only needed to put words to it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Esha stayed by the fire, alone with the dusty wind and the pond's dank scent. She wouldn't have minded walking for bamboo shoots — and wouldn't have minded calming Atarangi, either. Unfortunately, her ankles and knees were as useless as ropes made of porridge, so Esha sat, staring at them. They felt more misshapen every day. More like she had no business putting weight on them — like she had forgotten how to balance on foot and ankle joints. Animal traits took hold of humans in patches and spurts — but still, Esha had always hoped that a nimble cliffside animal wouldn't rob her of mobility in her last human days.</p><p>Since no one was around to witness it, Esha removed her sandal, unlaced her sock and peeled free her misshapen foot. The fleshy pads of her heels were shrinking away, refusing to take weight; her blackening toenails capped her entire toetips now, like she had dipped them straight downward into tar. Shoes were soon going to be more challenge than help. In a more fortunate life, Esha would be showing her feet to a nurse. Maybe getting them washed, to perfume the sweat stink out of the fur.</p><p>But this wasn't such a life, and Esha looked around in a thorough circle so she wouldn't offend some imperial guard division with her hoof-foot abomination. She saw no red uniforms. Just a fluttering in a pine tree's crown, which she watched until Clamshell's tawny head peered out.</p><p>Esha touched her palms together, a sloppy namaste that she didn't expect returned. “Hail, kin.”</p><p>“<em>Morning Sky — she chartreuse-gave-up?”</em></p><p>“No,” Esha said. “She's just walking a little. Clearing her head, then she'll try again to speak with the serpents. Am I enough company?”</p><p>Clamshell fluttered to the ground beside Esha; that seemed to be her answer.</p><p>“We're trying to speak with them, but it's impossible to know their answers. Everything they tell Ata— Morning Sky is a blue-spilled mess.”</p><p>Esha was so busy wondering if <em>blue-spilled</em> was right, she was caught unbalanced when Clamshell snapped.</p><p>“<em>You-humans speak bluer messes! Half-plum-shows and taupe-knotting changes! Phoenix words are simple. Move one crest, two crests or all crests to show our feeling, and use one orange-breed of sounds for all-things outside ourselves. It is divided into simple territories. Humans have of sounds, and faces that melt like snow into too many shapes. They won't speak to other humans because of small-signs of colour or place. They claim to honour sky's-blue, but they kill feather-kin whenever they can. Humans should not call other creatures confusing.”</em></p><p>Humans made <em>sense,</em> Esha wanted to snap. But that was an echo, a futile shout from her past. She knew, with a shocked and pained heart, that Clamshell was right.</p><p>She hummed a yielding note. “We have no right to accuse. If humans are going to give everyone a fair portion, we'll need more humans like Atarangi.”</p><p>Clamshell resettled her wings, satisfied but still simmering.</p><p>“Where's your chick?”</p><p>“<em>He is hiding. Golden-tucked, secret-safe.”</em> Clamshell strutted closer, to crane her neck at Esha's exposed foot. <em>“Human feet, do they always have cream-yellow-drifting hair?”</em></p><p>“No.”</p><p>She studied Esha's foot more intently. If Clamshell got it into her head to tweak the goat hair, Esha promised herself she would tweak some bristly nostril-feathers in return.</p><p>“Tell me,” Esha asked, while she was feeling honest and feeling new to the world, “do phoenixes change when you grow old? Do you ... turn into something else?”</p><p>“<em>We grey-flame-drift. We join the sky.”</em></p><p>Grey-flame-drifting made a hazy kind of sense. Esha asked anyway, “What does that look like?”</p><p>“<em>I have not seen it, but I have heard golden-truth-stories.” </em>Turning her eyes upward, watching that very sky, Clamshell said,<em> “Phoenix-kin, after long lives, fire-change into ashes. First our stringfeather-tips, then slow-ember-burning. In the end, no phoenix. Only flying.”</em></p><p>That sounded like a beautiful way to pass, was Esha's first horrified thought. Simply flying away mote by mote, like turning back into heaven's lungta. She didn't say so; she didn't trust her tongue to say anything.</p><p>“I'm glad to know that.” Now she wanted a walk more than ever, to cover distance if she had to crawl to do it. Esha put her sock and sandal back on, and waveringly rose. “I'd like to go walking now, too. Will you tell Atarangi and Rooftop, if you see them?”</p><p>Clamshell bobbed, and strutted away. By the time Esha gathered the wheeled pack and her walking pole, and left, Clamshell was picking through pine needles and thornbush saplings, as thought humans had never bothered her at all.</p><p>Esha didn't delude herself: she wasn't going to make it far. But she leaned on the pole, and sank to sit on the wheeled pack when she grew too weak, and by degrees she walked a quarter kilometre through the cedars. By the time she circled back to camp, she was breathless and agonized and feeling very slightly accomplished.</p><p>Atarangi was back, sitting fireside with the two phoenixes beside her. “Esha! We thought you had made off with all the supplies. Brought them to market for the blackflags to have.”</p><p>She wheezed a laugh, shuffling by degrees into the fire's warmth. “I wouldn't be stupid enough to come back if I did that. You sound in good spirits.”</p><p>Atarangi waved a hand. “It was nothing a little time and sweat couldn't cure. I was just telling our friends about how challenging diplomacy used to be, when I was only used to one variety of animism.”</p><p>That sounded like a tale worth hearing. Biting back her groan, Esha sank to sit.</p><p>“Do you need herb, Esha?”</p><p>“Save it for later,” she muttered.</p><p>With a press of her mouth like a shadow of a smile, Atarangi kept telling her story to Clamshell. “I simply had to learn how to read Rooftop's crests, when he was so small that his crests moved like. I had never even been kin with a bird before!”</p><p>“<em>You had talked with other intelligent-beings before,</em>” Rooftop said.</p><p>“Not <em>birds</em>. The squid use different means, they're ... well, I suppose more like humans. Their changing colours are like our changing faces.”</p><p>“But,” Esha said, “you still learned to read phoenix crests and grasp what they meant. Without ever having done it before.”</p><p>She had wedged a silence into this conversation. But somehow, it was a good silence: Atarangi and Rooftop looked to her with bright-wondering eyes. “What are you thinking, Esha Of The Fields?”</p><p>She was committed now, bound by a will to share. “It's a long enough story. Would you fill a water cup for me, Atarangi?”</p><p>Atarangi did, unhesitating. Esha didn't even know what was inside her own mind — just a sense that the many languages of people and creatures could fit together in strange ways. And that all the emotions she had grappled with as a new bride might suffice for this moment, in the same way a rock could be used to hammer a nail.</p><p>“I was ... just thinking about my yak,” she said quiet, winding her hands around the water cup. “I— Rather, my former husband had a yak. I had drained a few cups of beer and I got scared enough one day to speak to it. The yak was a gentle beast, she didn't mind speaking with me. Didn't understand much of what I said but I didn't much care. She just ... asked me why my ears didn't move.”</p><p>Esha swallowed, the past feelings of shame welling up her throat.</p><p>“She meant my human ears. But I wondered if my other ears—“ and she waved a loose hand toward her wrapped head, “—could move. They didn't have any hair on them when I was that age but they were still shaped a little like the yak's ears. I didn't want to think about that at the time so I pretended I didn't know what the yak was talking about. But ... what if I had showed the yak my other ears? What if I had tried harder to understand her? I've been thinking about that day. And now, however shameful it might be ... I don't know, I'm speaking nonsense.”</p><p>“No, not at all,” Atarangi said in silk-soft voice. “It's true — we have these traits we don't show, because it's the human way to pretend they aren't here. Mm ...”</p><p>Esha she mustered the will to look at the others. The phoenixes stared at her, considering — and Atarangi drifted in thought, her eyes wide as Empire-dug wells.</p><p>“Humans using our traits, instead of trying to pretend they don't exist,” Atarangi murmured. “Maybe we could. It would be another challenge but— One we might not have to undertake! Because—“ She stopped and sat straighter, smoothing her composure. “Well, diplomacy has four rules. The most important is that your message is only half of what you're saying. The other half is the way you <em>say</em> your message. Customs and expectations are just as important as the actual words. And Esha, you and I ... We're humans. What are we saying when we arrive wearing these?” She waved harsh at herself, her mask and wraps and layers.</p><p>“We're ... we're covering ourselves.”</p><p>“We're <em>hiding</em> ourselves! We're guilt-ridden before we've even begun negotiating! And the serpents,” she said, hands spreading as her voice rose, “speak with their fins even when they're <em>not</em> speaking with their fins, you see?”</p><p>Esha blinked. “...No?”</p><p>“They gesture with their fins, and also talk about fin position. That must be their— One of their strong social premises! Like how important it is that humans show our feelings with our faces. Gods, how didn't I see that? Humans cover our bodies as much as possible and I'm <em>still</em> given a side-eye for wearing this mask! How awful would a mask seem to a people who don't wear any coverings at all, and speak largely with their facial features?”</p><p>“<em>The </em>serr-fent<em> said you could unmake your insult,”</em> Rooftop added, the enthusiasm kindling him, too.</p><p>“And what was I doing, before he said that? Was I touching under my mask?”</p><p>“<em>Yes, yes!”</em></p><p>Turning to Esha, Clamshell asked an incredulous question with her crests.</p><p>“It .... sounds like we might make a bargain after all,” Esha told her.</p><p>Atarangi produced another herbal bribe from her cloak and asked Rooftop to deliver a message. “Tell the serpents ... that we apologize for any offense given. We humans will show our real selves to better express our wish for kinship.”</p><p>Rooftop took it and swooped away to the pond's edge, to stand there fidgeting excited.</p><p>“Should we leave?” Esha asked. “In case the sight of us is offensive?”</p><p>“That stone's already been thrown. I think we should ...” Atarangi gathered herself, and said, “We should just show our faces.”</p><p>Esha wasn't the one hiding her face and she never had been: that was a long throw away from the point. She nodded, and waited to see if Atarangi would go first.</p><p>She was proud of her beak, she had said. Its welling up out of her face was cause for celebration. But as honest as Atarangi had seemed then, her slightly-ragged-nailed hands moved hesitant toward the strap of her mask — and Esha could have sworn she looked afraid.</p><p>Then Esha would have to share a handful of initiative; sisters did that for one another. She took the edge of her own headwrap and, with only a nudging of terror, pulled it off. Up and over her markhor horns.</p><p>The terror bloomed like ink into paper, as Atarangi's eyes bolted wide under the mask. Then she smiled. Wry and uneven, like she was too surprised to shape the gesture properly.</p><p>“Ears! And those fine horns ... You're a cow?”</p><p>“No, gods, no! Do I <em>spend</em> like I'm an empress? I've got markhor goat. Started when I was a small child, I had horn buds hard under my skin when I was only six summers old.”</p><p>She got her first headwrap that summer. A burgundy silk headwrap, too fine-textured for a child to possibly appreciate. A headwrap she hated because it mashed her hair under lumpy folds of fabric and she didn't <em>want</em> to wear it, but her family and her tutors all hissed to keep it on, and the one time she threw it onto the new-powdered snow the world cracked loud and her cheek was ablaze from Mother's palm. Esha hadn't understood. She soon did.</p><p>But right now, there was no one but Atarangi and some birds to see her. Maybe a ranger would patrol past and catch an eyeful. Esha resisted the urge to throw her yellow-orange headwrap gleeful onto the dirt; instead, she pretended to care about her patchwork hair while Atarangi freed her own head.</p><p>The mask came away like lifting a stone out of farm soil, a weighty peeling. But Atarangi wasn't the darker depths of hidden soil: she was, if anything, a slightly paler shade of sienna where she had fended the sun away from her face for so long. Her broad nose was human, almost entirely so — except for the hard, pearly hook at the tip.</p><p>“Your beak isn't so large as I expected,” Esha said. “I was thinking of something like my horns. A full face of beak, maybe some feathers.”</p><p>“No,” Atarangi said. “It's just this much of my eagle, for now.”</p><p>Esha hummed answer. Then she laughed because she had to; it bubbled inside her like beer downed too fast. “It is rare to be free, isn't it?”</p><p>“If the serpents deem it necessary for diplomacy, we'll need to become used to it.” Now, when Atarangi smiled back, her crinkling eyes were part of an entire face, a perfectly human one. “If we're afraid of storms, the best cure is to stand in the rain.”</p><p>Esha shrugged. “Rain does good for any crop worth eating.”</p><p>At the pondside, Rooftop still stood vigilant, his fire-bright back set to them. Esha would have to tease him about yams later, possibly while feeding him some. For the moment, she and Atarangi had strategy to discuss between their honest faces.</p><p>They discussed the serpents' fins and barbels a little more, over popped maize and kudzu.</p><p>“Barbels seems like the closest word Grewian has got,” Atarangi hazarded. “Or any other mountain tongue. Water serpents' barbels have a flexing and grasping quality to them, more like a tentacle. Mm, but you've never seen those, either, have you?”</p><p>“Not unless they're on a clam or a snail.”</p><p>They were not, apparently. So Atarangi described other extravagant ocean animals she had known. Things with tentacles that snatched and strangled, or else picked up beach glass with an unwavering curiosity.</p><p>“I was always good at speaking with the squid,” Atarangi said. “My tribe lives on the sea's edge, and I swam with the squid whenever I could. They speak with coloured spots on their skin, so as long as I ate enough gourd beforehand I could understand them. Sometimes I'd stay out all day and my lungta would fade, so I'd eat seaweed. After some years, I knew where the best lungta kelp grew, nearly every leaf in the northern sea.”</p><p>“Sounds as though you were born to diplomacy.”</p><p>“You might say that. I had a skill Tselaya Mountain coveted, so my family applied for a caste designation for me. That was in my tenth summer — actually, we received word back just before my sixteenth solstice.”</p><p>She stopped to take a mouthful of millet, rolling the hot grain careful on her tongue. Esha waited, trying to imagine the child Atarangi floating joyful in a vast sea. It was an image too far away for a mountain woman to truly know.</p><p>“My beak-touched nose was a thing of joy among my people. My family couldn't believe it when the Tselayan Empire rejected my application to diplomat caste.” She glowed with the memory. “I didn't think about it among the squid. But now ... I've stopped noticing how much I cover myself. It's something my bones have accepted even while my tongue speaks protests.”</p><p>“That's the way with all humans,” Esha said. “We've all got parts to be covered.”</p><p>“Why, though?”</p><p>Esha had wondered <em>why</em> ten thousand times in her life. She tried to recall the last time she wondered such a thing and found herself travelling back years, decades into the dusty past. It was around the time her heart was scabbed over from the divorce, when the sight of the divorcee flag was ceasing to sting, that Esha Of The Fields gave up and supposed the world was just unfair.</p><p>“We humans can only keep our civilized world if we control our fears, I think.”</p><p>With a bitter sorrow in her mouth, but still with a spark of hope in her eyes, Atarangi asked, “They told you that humans aren't beasts, and they must act as such. By maintaining a haughty boundary, just as the emperor avoids his lavatory janitor.”</p><p>“That's ... I guess that's right.”</p><p>“By the wide waves,” Atarangi said, “I don't understand it. As sure as we're born into humanity, we're going to leave it behind. It's a constant of the world, in any weather, no matter where we're from. Why do the people of this mountain hate other creatures so much?”</p><p>“You might ask my parents.”</p><p>Esha had said too much. But it felt good to say it, to finally spit out the bitter pulp she had held in her mouth all these years, long since chewed but too unseemly to spit out. She might not ever go to market again, might not lie about her name again if Atarangi kept providing so well for her.</p><p>All of that was a night's awful dreaming compared to Atarangi's face — confused but still bright with the shared knowledge. “Six years old, you said? It starts that young for Grewiers?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Silence fell. Esha picked through the maize kernels in her palm.</p><p>Atarangi ventured, “How old does a typical—“</p><p>“Adult years. Perhaps twenty, or twenty-five. My horns broke skin when I was seven. There was no record of such early onset in my family line; the physician thought the horn buds might in fact be ingrown goat hair but that proved to be a false hope. It was simply— I was just unfit for my own blood.”</p><p>“Oh, <em>Esha</em> ...”</p><p>“I was moved. Showed no aptitude for leatherwork, so I renamed again and moved again. This time to Yam Plateau. And with that, I was a farming woman. And as much as I cried, I at least began understanding that I had to work if I didn't want to fall any farther.”</p><p>“Would they truly demote a noble-born child all the way down to untouchable? You did nothing to deserve it!”</p><p>“I don't know,” Esha sighed. “It doesn't matter now. I started learning to be a working member of this society, and it must have been good enough. I've been working the soil ever since I was ten years old. Well, until these last weeks when I demoted myself to thieving.”</p><p>Sitting in silence, grasping her own hands like selfropes, Atarangi shook her head. “I knew that Grewiers feared losing their station in life. But that ... Who could put a child to work like that?”</p><p>“Childhood is like a painted vase. It's lovely, but not very useful, and fragile as hell, too.”</p><p>“Well, yes. But breaking it like that can get someone cut.” Atarangi's mouth flattened. “Tselayan humans have their skills and their failings, my friend. I've always found your castes obtuse, and prone to judging people like they're pigs to be cut apart. Pigs are smart creatures, you know that?”</p><p>Esha tightened her mouth, and said nothing.</p><p>“But after hearing what the caste rules have done to you,” Atarangi went on with a firework's passion, “and for no crime of yours, only for your goat trait showing itself early ...”</p><p>“Life is what it is,” Esha sighed. “Maybe I'll be happier as a simple-minded goat, climbing the cliffsides.”</p><p>Atarangi took a handful of popped maize and chewed, watching the sky. Her gaze drifted to Rooftop sometimes, their sentinel by the serpents' pond.</p><p>“I'm trying to change this place,” she finally said.</p><p>“Change?” She couldn't mean this present place, the simple few hectares of wilds that Clamshell called hers. “You're trying to ...?”</p><p>“Gather properties. Small ones such as Gita's, that can pass through many hands without garnering notice. Gather allies who can be my eyes and my tongue.”</p><p>Rooftop, she meant, and phoenixes like him. Rooftop was a treasure to Atarangi's cause — partly because at that moment, he stood at the pondside while a serpent's nose parted the water.</p><p>“Someday,” Atarangi murmured, scrambling to her feet, “maybe I'll put together a plateau where everyone can live free.”</p><p>Esha could only watch her stride away to join Rooftop, removing her cloak and dropping it careful along the way.</p><p>Again, Rooftop looked like a red crumb, croaking upward to a towering blue water serpent who dripped from every fin. This time, the serpent noted Atarangi's approach — Atarangi bare-faced and bare-shouldered. And it kept clicking in simple rhythms.</p><p>Soon enough, the serpent took its bribe and retreated. Atarangi gratefully put her warm cloak back on, and she and Rooftop left the pondside to report their progress.</p><p>“Well, then?” Esha asked. “They don't like our head coverings?”</p><p>“<em>True,”</em> Rooftop said. “<em>This serpent we meet every time is a ... </em>krrah<em>.”</em></p><p>Measuring dinner rice into a pot, Atarangi squinted thoughtful. “He's a ... journeyer? Venturer? One who takes a chance by going.”</p><p>“Ffen-chur-rr,” Rooftop decided. He took delight in the difficult word, rolling the burred sounds in his throat. “<em>Venturer serpent does wish to have talk about Clamshell's debt. But he thought you were deceiving him by not showing your skin. Like you were tying tricks and building lies.”</em></p><p>Esha frowned. “Because he thought we were liars, he was speaking in riddles? Really?”</p><p>“Like the way we spoke riddles,” Atarangi said, quietly realizing, “when we were strangers to each other, trying to trade drugs and ill-gotten property.”</p><p>That truth slapped Esha cold in the face. All the quaint idiocy the two of them acted out, dropping pebbles down pipes and intoning about <em>supplies</em>.</p><p>With uneasy-flexing crests, Rooftop went on, “I told him your coverings are the human way, and you regret any offense given.”</p><p>“I think it'll be alright if we explain that we're keeping warm with most of these things we wear.” Atarangi plucked at the fibre-furred shoulder of her cloak. “I get the impression that serpents don't like the wind or sun, so they should be able to understand our clothing once we explained it.”</p><p>“If I lived underground and liked the dark,” Esha supposed, “I wouldn't care much for glare and gale, either.”</p><p>“There — now you're thinking like an animist.”</p><p>Esha still wasn't sure whether to like that thought.</p><p>Over the next three days, Atarangi stayed by the camp site like she was tied there, preparing her sprouting lungta beans and her bitter herb-stalk cakes, waiting on serpents to break the pond's wind-rippled surface. She wore her mask only sometimes; she sent Rooftop checking for guard patrols and wandering fuelcutters as often as she kept him pondside for translation help.</p><p>“I haven't felt this free in a long time,” Atarangi beamed, touching her beak tip.</p><p>Esha kept her headwrap on, except when serpents were present to take offence. She crept closer to the negotiations sometimes; the serpent regarded her with an undulation of fins, eyed her warm sleeves and sari, and silently permitted her.</p><p>The venturer serpent shared his name with Atarangi. It was a precise grinding of teeth, a rising <em>arryyk</em> sound like the one buildings made under immense strain. <em>Sureness,</em> said Esha's head full of lungta. The serpent sure enough to negotiate was named Sureness.</p><p>Odd name, Esha thought, at the same time she found it an unwavering match: the coiled fish-beast towering over Atarangi's head looked nothing more than sure of himself.</p><p>Atarangi shared news after each meeting. Sureness was one of the serpents watching this territory, the surface territory occupied by the landholder-female phoenix. This place had strategic value for serpentkind. Currently, their kind needed lungta herb and Clamshell was obstructing it.</p><p>“He won't say why their need is especially great,” Atarangi sighed. “I think there's some nuance I'm missing in the way he says <em>needing</em> lungta herb.”</p><p>“Don't poison yourself,” Esha muttered. She dished up a large bowl of rice for Atarangi, the better to buffer anything else she planned on swallowing.</p><p>“I think I'll manage. The translation is coming easier now that he's meeting me partway along. He doesn't seem comfortable discussing Clamshell's involvement in this, though. Which is ...” Atarangi grimaced. “A problem.”</p><p>“Thinks it's none of your business?”</p><p>“Or he's bound by another's rules.”</p><p>Rice lump lifted halfway to her mouth, Esha stared. “<em>Serpent</em> rules?”</p><p>“<em>Rules-of-under — that is what Sureness called them,”</em> Rooftop added. <em>“He called them rules-of-under before, when he disliked your clothing-wrapped faces.”</em></p><p>Serpents had risen from the depths, to speak aristocratically about how offensive clothing was. What a shock it all would have been to Esha the farmwoman who struggled under ordinary days.</p><p>They were scrubbing the dinner pot, with Atarangi eagerly anticipating one more negotiating session before nightfall, when another earthquake took the land. An earthquake barely enough to sway their balance and slosh the potful of drinking water.</p><p>Maybe an aftershock, Esha hoped. Maybe the month of heaving land was finally over.</p><p>But Sureness didn't appear in the pond that night. And he was absent the next day, too.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was nothing to be done for it but stockpile more herb, refill the tea and butter reserves, and wait. Atarangi put her mask back on and asked Rooftop to mind the camp — while she brought Esha to market. Pulling her on the wheeled pack to spare Esha's worsening knees, like hauling a sick yak to the veterinarian.</p><p>It was the kindest thing anyone but Gita had ever done for her. Esha held that truth warm against her heart, even while stifling her smile at the looks passers-by gave them. A diplomat was, against all things decreed and decent, bending her back to pull a low-caste on a cart. How nobility would grip their brocade collars at the sight. At least, Esha thought, this arrangement was somewhat proper: she <em>was</em> following behind Atarangi.</p><p>Millworks's market district brought her no joy, though. Brick piles marked where buildings used to stand; roofs sagged into jumbled walls. The alleys around the market were a forest of fabrics strung into tents. If the money hadn't been present to build quake-resistant homes, surely it would be slow in coming to rebuild.</p><p>At the market checkpoint, guards noted Atarangi and Gita's names into the records and turned immediately back to an engineering overseer, a headwrapped man who gripped a task sheet with pale knuckles.</p><p>To her credit, Atarangi paid generously for what she bought.</p><p>“The spiral road must be in shambles,” Esha said, on the way back. Underneath her, the pack wheels weren't squeaking anymore; Atarangi, in her wisdom, had bought and used a vial of mineral oil on them. “Anyone willing to climb spires will make coin in times like these.</p><p>Atarangi hummed, her voice low and strained with effort. “I wonder if Sureness is experiencing the same difficulty human beings are.”</p><p>Esha nearly spoke, but yanked her mouth shut. Reactions balled together inside her and anything she said would have been poor representation.</p><p>“Serpents move through waterways, after all,” Atarangi went on, “and we can't begin to say how much damage these earthquakes have wrought underground.”</p><p>“Water always finds a way through,” Esha tried. She didn't like how that sounded, faltering in her own voice. “I don't mean to wish spite on Sureness or ... or his kind. But what about Clamshell's claim that the serpents were going to raise the water, Atarangi? We ought to be talking about that. <em>Can</em> they summon water from the bowels of the earth?”</p><p>Adjusting the pack straps on her shoulders, Atarangi huffed an unsure sound. “Have you ever heard tell of such a thing?”</p><p>“You don't need to mock me.”</p><p>“No, I'm not! Tselayan folk say that serpents appear on the surface to snatch. It seems that they do: they want our lungta-rich plants, and they surely need to hurry back into safe quarters after taking any. Tselayans say that serpents are drawn by deeps. That seems true, too; Sureness comes swimming up from somewhere in that pond's recesses.”</p><p>“And through water veins. I can't get my mind around how that's possible.”</p><p>“How what's possible?”</p><p>“A monstrous — monstrously big, I mean — thing like Sureness wriggling up through fonts we can't even see flowing. Most of them are just damp earth! But he does it, somehow, if Clamshell is to be believed.”</p><p>Atarangi turned a sidelong glance over her shoulder, smiling mild and fey like she used to. “<em>Do</em> you believe her?”</p><p>“Yaah, I don't know. She was right about the serpents, and she's got reason enough to fret. But I still feel like she'd turn us in to the guards for two grains of rice.”</p><p>“Not at all — she hates guards more than most other humans.” Raising a hand, stifling her chuckling, Atarangi added, “We shouldn't speak this way about our kin. We only need to keep trying to unwind knots. This is diplomacy, Esha. There are many, many knots sometimes.”</p><p>Though Atarangi couldn't see it, Esha nodded. This was definitely no time for cutting through any tangled strings, if she wanted her plenty-knotted khukuri brought down from the forest canopy.</p><p>Rooftop sang a glad greeting as they returned. He wasn't alone by the hearth pit, though: Clamshell's chick sat with him, his indistinct brownness blending into the swept dirt but his black eyes ever alight.</p><p>“You've got the small one!” Atarangi dropped the pack straps and went to the chick, kneeling and pulling morsels from her cloak.</p><p>“<em>Clamshell-kin has flame-negotiated beside me,”</em> Rooftop said. He stood proud but his crests wavered half-spread. <em>“While you were gone, Sureness has come and left three times.”</em></p><p>“Oh. We were just wondering about him — is he well?”</p><p>“<em>Well, yes! Blocked from the surface after the earth-quaking, but ...”</em></p><p>Esha stared for a moment at Clamshell — who sat beside a pine tree overhanging the pond. She brooded over the muskmelon Esha had seen earlier in a treetop — now balanced on her feet, steadied by a wrapped and tied yankvine she held with her beak. She had no words for her returned kin, not even for Atarangi who stuffed treats into her chick's mouth: Clamshell simply stared at the pond's surface, waiting.</p><p>Maybe was irritable about trading her troves away, Esha supposed. Or from dragging the melon around; the fruit had to weigh as much as Clamshell herself did. After watching the pond for a moment, herself, Esha listened again to Rooftop's report on the serpents.</p><p> </p><p>It was a challenging time for everyone, the summary seemed to be. With the ongoing earthquakes, Sureness's superiors needed lungta-rich plants more than ever; Sureness lacked the permission to say why, either that or he simply preferred staring at surface dwellers.</p><p>“Wait,” Atarangi asked, scratching the phoenix chick's downy ruff, “did he say <em>speaking</em> plants? Or lungta-rich plants?”</p><p><em>“Any kind,”</em> Rooftop said, his crests spread surprised. <em>“Speaking is good. Moving is good. Serpents want lungta plants, that plain-showing truth.”</em></p><p>Atarangi hummed. “Clamshell?” she called, her voice gusting with herb, “When you were, ah, first asked for plants, were you asked for <em>speaking</em> lungta?”</p><p>“<em>Speaking lungta always scarlet-shines precious,”</em> Clamshell creaked back. <em>“Regardless, yes. The water-snakes wanted lungta-food for their black tongues.”</em></p><p>“Their needs have changed,” Atarangi murmured.</p><p>Sitting on flat earth and oblivious to what laid underneath, Esha feared the answer and she asked anyway: “What does that mean?”</p><p>With hands nearly used to the motion, Atarangi removed her mask. “I'll need to speak to them more. Until then, I can't begin to guess.”</p><p> </p><p>As the afternoon wore on, their supply of fuel dwindled, the tea-boiling embers receding into their own ash. With Atarangi poised to negotiate and the phoenixes mantled helpful around her, Esha was wordlessly drafted to the job — wheeled pack, walking pole, goat legs and all.</p><p>“Be careful, sister,” Atarangi said regretful. “Don't strain yourself.”</p><p>Esha waved a hand, batting the thought away. “If I'm going to strain something, I'll at least be useful in the process."</p><p>With all the cooking their group was doing, they were straining the bamboo supply by the serpents' pond. Esha had cut most of the thick-grown, dry bamboo — everything that didn't resonate too hollow when she tapped it. She still didn't know whether serpents were actually drawn to hollowheart bamboo; it was a trouble she thought about a lot and hadn't managed to ask about yet.</p><p>Gradually, in a three-part dance between her feet, pole and pack wheels, Esha headed edgeward, south toward the thin stands of bamboo with wind-bent tops.</p><p>It was a soothing day, at least. Strung thin with white clouds; full of rainbow lungta flakes wheeling down from on high; warm as oncoming summer but with enough breeze to lift sweat off Esha's neck. A handful of low-castes walked a ghost of a pathway, away from a distant thicket with bundled fuel under their arms. Esha followed their guide and, after a mere hour's shuffling, came to a stand of bamboo. She drank deep from the wheeled pack's water skin; this was a fine choice of time to give up eating millet. And after careful tapping to choose a bamboo stem, Esha lined up her broken khukuri blade and her striking rock.</p><p>She was just getting a notch going, her arm cocking back for a first hard strike, when she heard clicking. Rhythmic clicking. Like serpent's teeth.</p><p>Esha whipped around. There were no lakes or ponds here, no skythreads within sight. Water veins might have riddled the ground under her feet but she couldn't dig up every pace she took.</p><p>“Hail?” Esha called to the empty air. “Is someone here?”</p><p>Wind, and her own pulse, and a distant thrush calling.</p><p>Esha looked back to her notched bamboo, mustered her strength to raise her striking rock, and then it came again. Clicking — in a pattern she nearly recognized.</p><p>There was a face under an upheaved patch of earth. Eyes with whites, and a water-green snout. Barbels like the straggled roots the serpent wore on its head. If there was a water vein under this ground, it couldn't have been wider than this serpent's body but here it was, watching her, close enough to throw the rock at.</p><p>The serpent clicked, its white teeth flashing. <em>“Greeting: this one extends a request!”</em></p><p>Lungta rushed in Esha's ears, from some plant born of water and rustled by cave wind. It was hailing her. Gods, she was cutting bamboo and a serpent was rising from the earth to <em>hail</em> her, and Esha knew it was tactless to think but she wondered if she was about to be snatched into the deeps.</p><p>“W-wait,” Esha said, She was no diplomat, no skilled animist regardless of Atarangi's compliments, and she certainly couldn't interpret other tongues without betel. Even if the serpent was using lungta. She simply needed betel.</p><p>After a moment of digging through the pack and swallowing half-chewed lumps, she looked again to the serpent. It waited, packed there in its earthen channel, watching her with nail-head eyes.</p><p>“Aah,” Esha sputtered. “Alright. Hail to you.”</p><p>Half-hidden by soil, its barbels twitched. And the serpent flinched, and shifted something Esha couldn't begin to see, and it pushed its head out of the soil crevice. Two blue-dappled fins popped free and a dozen various-sized barbels with it.</p><p>“<em>Query: that one is associated with the landholder phoenix-bird resident to this area?”</em></p><p>“Me?” It was a stilted mess of a question, but still aimed right at Esha. “I-I am, yes. Associated with a phoenix-bird.”</p><p>Its fins waved, its eerily pale mouth opening like a crude-drawn grin.<em> “Jubilance! This one has located the other!”</em></p><p>“W-well, if you were <em>looking</em> for me—“</p><p>“Hail, there?” came a man's voice behind Esha.</p><p>Her heart leaped against her breastbone; she tried to turn on her planted, aching joints and twisted too far over, falling onto her rump.</p><p>There on the faint-trod path stood a young man — Grewier, thin as a whip, wearing a millworker's caste sigil and wide eyes. He carried a sheathed khukuri and a sack bigger than he was.</p><p>“I heard a voice. Is everything alright, mother?”</p><p>Caught talking to a serpent, caught with animism lungta still on her lips. But the young man stared only at Esha, seeing just one elder woman. She chanced a look behind her; the earth clump was replaced. Only a few torn roots —and the protruding green tip of a single barbel — showed that anything was amiss.</p><p>“Yes,” Esha blurted. “Yes, I just— I saw a lungta mote that reminded me of my own mother. Thought I'd say hello to her.”</p><p>“Oh,” the young man said, brightening awkwardly like he didn't smile often. “I see. Heaven isn't far away, I'm told.”</p><p>“I am as fine as I can be. Thank you, child.”</p><p>“Apologies for scaring you,” he said, and he kept on.</p><p>With her heart still deafening in her ears, Esha turned back to the serpent's hiding-hovel. She lifted her blade remnant and stone to the bamboo. “Hey. Hail. That human is gone.”</p><p>Gradually as dripping paint, the earth clump lifted. The serpent peered out. <em>“Statement: that-other-one is leg-walking at a bearing ( )-( ). Theory: it vacates this place.”</em></p><p>Esha couldn't sort out the directions: they felt too similar to <em>up</em> and <em>outward</em> to make any sense on a compass. But still, the serpent knew a surface dweller's actions. More than Esha's eyes could possibly tell past the thickets. “You can tell where he's going? How?”</p><p>“<em>Simplicity, simplicity.”</em></p><p>Too simple to see the stranger approaching in the first place, though. Esha sighed, “Maybe you should pay more attention, serpent-ally. You'll get us discovered by other humans.”</p><p>“<em>Correction: this-one did not venture here to discuss stranger-ambushes. Or instigate them.”</em> It tapped its tongue wet against the roof of its paper-pale mouth, a sound ringing with squirming regret. <em>“Statement: this one and that one converse through lungta, at peace.”</em></p><p>“Oh, gods' balls, I'm sorry.” Esha reached for her headwrap, snatching the horn curves underneath. “This covering is rude, isn't it?”</p><p>The serpent inclined its head, dirt crumbling onto its snout. <em>“Theory: if on a serpent, similar obscurement would offend. Condition: that one is not a serpent.”</em></p><p>Finally, a thinking creature from the mountain wilds who made <em>sense</em>.</p><p>“<em>Correction, correction! No further tangents. A serpent converses with a human this day. Such occurrence inspires this one! Historical precedent transpires!”</em></p><p>Through her building headache, Esha asked “Does it?”</p><p>Stretching upward, barbels spilling the serpent chattered, <em>“Statement: these ones make precedent! Introduction: this one is—”</em></p><p>His tooth-sounds stopped passing through the lungta's mesh. The serpent gave her syllables — two scrapes and a tap — but Esha couldn't associate it with anything but a janitor's straw broom.</p><p>“Xi ...shi ...klak,” Esha tried. “You are ... clean-moving? I don't understand.”</p><p>It snapped fins against its body and dropped away, down into his hole with a thump of earth against earth.. Before Esha could wonder what she did wrong, he returned — lifting the earth hat again with his splay-finned head, and lifting one of his large barbels in offering.</p><p>He held a piece of metal. Warm-hued like copper, and so thin that Esha took it in her fingers carefully, fearing to crumple it.</p><p>“<em>Xishiklak,</em>” the serpent repeated.</p><p>Light caught in the metal — in pockmarks like stray hammer blows. Esha chilled with amazement; these were too uniform and too meaningfully placed to be clumsy mistakes. No, this was writing — writing far different from any human's ink marks.</p><p>The spacing was strange, but meanings glowed in Esha's awareness once she put her lingering breakfast herb lungta toward them.</p><p>“Nimble ...? Or should I say Xi-shi-klak?” Try to say it, at any rate.</p><p>“<em>Announcement: this one has no preference,” </em>Nimble chattered.<em> “Request: simply address this one at all.”</em></p><p> </p><p>She discerned a few more things from serpent: that he was male, and part of a Triad. Soon, though, Esha blamed the need for firewood and they parted.</p><p>Though she had never felt such a headache in her entire life — not even hung over, after talking to the yak — Esha was happy, walking back to camp with fuel piled onto the wheeled pack. She hobbled and dragged her way home, to her spot in the wilderness where she could talk to odd-minded friends who wore inhuman bodies. </p><p>As she approached the camp's smoke plume, Atarangi came to meet her, with worry creased all around her eyes.</p><p>There was a problem, she said. Clamshell had given some trove goods to the serpents — as a good faith gesture, a minimum payment on her fees outstanding.</p><p>One of those trove goods was the Kanakisipt khukuri.</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>“<em>I did not give your iron-tool away with cloud-grey eyes,”</em> Clamshell said.</p><p>The assurance in her voice was worse than any screeching she could have done. Esha said nothing; she kept digging the heels of her hands into the flattened arch of her right foot. The pain there was probably the goat's doing, a pain she could do nothing to sway, but applying pressure there was a trick worth testing.</p><p>“<em>The serpents speak a rainwater tongue now, black threats turned to beige words. They wish for speaking-plant; they green-think about forgiving my sins! I had to give a song-gift. Yours was the royal-deepest song.”</em></p><p>“It had to be <em>my</em> khukuri? You've got a farm's worth of foods tucked away in those tree gardens of yours. Why can't I have my chance to retire?”</p><p>Esha's voice had simmered, rising above a whisper. She looked across the radiant hearth coals to Atarangi's tent, where no one inside moved.</p><p>Beside her, Clamshell heard plenty well. She turned away, crests a stiff parody of pride, to preen her chick with the scissor-sharp points of her beak. After a long day of hearing lungta-wrapped words, the chick slept on his mother's back; the preening got no response but to nestle his face deeper into Clamshell's feathers.</p><p>“<em>You have no young, Precious One?”</em></p><p>“No,” Esha sighed. “I don't have young. Even if I did, I wouldn't rob others in their name.”</p><p>Another silence, stiff with crest movement. Clamshell let out a whistling keen, a fanfare to shame as she watched Esha's working hands.</p><p>“<em>Life flies on teal-broken wings. This was one choice-path, only one; I red-guard my decision.”</em> She paused. <em>“If you sharply-need help, Precious One, I owe you my wings. Our trust is white-broken but still, we are kin now.”</em></p><p>“I'll remember that,” Esha said flat.</p><p>In the curtain-thick quiet of night, with her back-biting well explained Clamshell should have left. She didn't.</p><p>“<em>My chick is yellow-growing, by claw-measures each day. His speaking-feathers comes in. Did Rooftop-kin tell you?”</em></p><p>“No ...”</p><p>Clamshell turned, showing her own back with the chick's curled back on top. <em>“In-the-middle of a phoenix's tail, there are two round-tip feathers. Tight together, for orange-holding the fast-rushing wind. Chicks? They have no fire, therefore no speaking-feathers. Grown phoenixes have the strength to fly and to bear words. When speaking-feathers are greening, a chick begins to speak.”</em></p><p>Much as she wanted to resent every feather on Clamshell's body, Esha squinted in the dying firelight. In the centre of Clamshell's forked tail there were two perfect quills, straight and round-tipped and grown as if from the same pore. The chick had a matching pair budding in the tufted mess on its rump. Two orange nubs of oncoming adulthood.</p><p>“<em>He will speak well. He will build-rosy-golden and fly true.”</em></p><p>“Well, at least some good came of it.”</p><p>That was enough, a granule of forgiveness for Clamshell to hold in her craw. She croaked resigned and left, walking away into the shadows and then fluttering out of sight.</p><p>As for Esha, she bore harder into her seized arch. Her khukuri had been within her grasp; now, it was gone. The options had changed and yet turned more the same than they had ever been.</p><p> </p><p>In the marshy pre-dawn light; Rooftop's tapping beak woke Esha.</p><p><em>“</em>Serr-fents <em>are here,”</em> he rasped.</p><p>“Nngh,” Esha replied. “Let me join you. I want to talk to them.”</p><p>He trilled, crests bouncing up pleased. They left Esha's tent and hurried to share greens — as Esha realized that she and Rooftop were speaking without one whisper of lungta between them. Maybe there was hope for her animism yet.</p><p>Atarangi stood straight-backed in the creeping dawn, her gooseflesh a stark pattern well before Esha arrived beside her. She spoke greenly with two serpents — the huge one Sureness, and a serpent half his size with a blue-dappled snout that looked familiar.</p><p>Esha's arrival was a snapped wax seal, an interrupted moment as the serpents regarded her.</p><p>“Hail to you both,” she said, and gestured namaste. She couldn't say if the idea of divinity greeting divinity would translate, and the serpents' rank was beyond guessing, but Esha was in no mind for stumbling niceties.</p><p>Both serpents flicked their head-fins — the smaller one more vigorous, with his mouth open a cotton-white sliver. Yes, Esha grew sure she knew this serpent, and she said, “I'm pleased to see you again, Xi-shi-klak.”</p><p>Trying to pronounce the sounds didn't work and it made her teeth hurt besides — but Atarangi beamed with a golden-held <em>I knew you could</em>. And before them both, Nimble chattered an ecstatic stream of words that Esha's wolfed-down lungta couldn't keep up with. <em>Precedent</em> and <em>ally</em> were in it somewhere.</p><p>The serpent Sureness, the most hulking creature Esha had ever seen, was beginning to look familiar. Mostly in the way he bent, listening to the entire world of beings smaller than him; he shifted like a half-opened fan when Nimble began to chatter, into a stooped angle made for listening.</p><p>When Nimble finished, Sureness kept listening. Possibly to something in his own head, because he soon flicked head-fins — in agreement, said the lungta — and stretched back into a cobra-sure posture.</p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> he clicked, <em>“after these ones received lungta-goods fourteen pulses ago, they sought amnesty for the landholder phoenix of this region. Proposal: in the shadow of recent events, there are more important matters to be dealt with. Query: are those ones prepared to provide bolstering food?”</em></p><p>“We are,” Atarangi said. And she lifted the jute pouch that held their popped maize supply.</p><p>And Sureness left the water, to slither closer and reach a barbel into the bag and lift one popped kernel with fingers' precision. In an even more surreal sight, he put the kernel between white spade teeth and, experimentally, munched.</p><p><em>Amnesty </em>still lodged in Esha's head, though. This hadn't been the first time the serpents described Clamshell as an offender, a breaker of some serpent law. Esha picked her memory for Clamshell's hot words.</p><p>“This is maize,” Atarangi said. “It is the seeds of a light-loving grass, cooked on a fire. You may take more, if you wish.”</p><p>Staring, scraping that trace of maize over all his teeth, Sureness stared for an inward moment. Then he clicked, <em>“Query: is maize plentiful and easily replaced?”</em></p><p>“Yes,” Atarangi said. “Many humans grow maize. There is enough to share it regularly with others.”</p><p>“<em>Request: I want one ( )-flask filled with maize, for our further consideration.”</em></p><p>Warm as wool, Atarangi said, “Yes, of course, we can give you that.”</p><p>Esha's first concern was how large a blank-flask was; she couldn't get any meaning from the serpent word, like it was too slippery for lungta to hold. But Sureness produced an object from the rag-looking fronds on the back of his neck — a fluted flask as tall as Esha's hand, made from something that shone like metal or glass or both. From slender neck barbels to the ropy main barbels on his snout, Sureness passed the flask down to set in the fleshy breadth of Atarangi's offered hand.</p><p>“<em>Suggestion:“</em> Nimble clacked, sudden and excited, <em>“give trade goods! Reciprocity!”</em></p><p>With the blank-flask out of his figurative hands, Sureness turned waving fins to the other serpent. It was another flickering that slid past Esha's lungta, some pattern of meanings like accountant's records she couldn't match actual yams to.</p><p>“You may consider this maize a gift,” Atarangi offered.</p><p>Nimble already dove, tail fin swishing against the pond's surface.</p><p>Still standing enormous before them, Sureness waited, looking around the camp clearing like he hadn't seen it before. He bent then — putting his chest barbels against the ground, Esha figured out. Feeling the earth or touching or tasting it; she couldn't have said.</p><p>But with Sureness's crocodile snout bent down to her eye level, Esha had a better look at his face. Within the blue dapples of his frog-smooth skin was a line — a slashed line of a scar across his snout, recently healed. Not unlike the one Esha wore on her own face.</p><p>The thought of Clamshell as a known rule-spurner made a handful more sense. If Esha had extra rupees to bet with, she would have bet them all that Clamshell had attacked Sureness in a shrieking rage — and that the serpent had more pride to wound than Esha did.</p><p>Nimble was back, splashing up and out of the water, flowing around Sureness to present a grey lump to Atarangi in an outstretched barbel. Smiling graceful, she accepted it. The lump looked more like caulking pitch than any food Esha had ever seen — but, she chided herself, maybe it just contained an expertly hidden secret.</p><p>“Thank you,” Atarangi said. “And please, tell your kind that we are willing to lend aid in more and greater ways. That maize is only one of many food crops we can obtain.”</p><p>It was a large promise. But not an untrue one.</p><p>By the fireside, Atarangi turned the grey lump between her fingers.</p><p>“<em>Looks like rock-plant,”</em> Rooftop said, blinking intent at it.</p><p>Esha grimaced; a distant memory told her that lichen was grainy and she had once swallowed some just to be rid of it. “Do you know what it is? Because I don't.”</p><p>“I think I've eaten this before,” Atarangi said. After a little more staring consideration, she put the lump's edge between her teeth and bit off a speck. “It was dried and salted, but they said it was a cave plant from the high reaches of Tselaya.” Her eyes bolted open. “Language lungta. Best for ... for matching suiting lyrics to a song's melody, I think.” Atarangi hummed a thumping beat like free-galloping feet, and inspiration lit her face. “Yes, this is the very same plant.”</p><p>“Song lungta? That sounds expensive.”</p><p>Pinching off a larger speck — to put in Rooftop's beak and stop his eager nudging — Atarangi hummed agreement. “This is what they gave us in exchange for a rupee's worth of maize. They're either generous with their trade offers, or serpents have access to plants we call luxuries.”</p><p>“<em>Clamshell-kin said the serpents want to water-cover her land to make more cave-space. Or more river-space.”</em></p><p>“Are,” Esha asked, “you saying they can grow <em>crops</em>?”</p><p>“Why not?” Atarangi turned a smiling look to her. “Phoenixes cultivate.”</p><p>“They grow small garden plots, at best.” To Rooftop, Esha added, “No offense meant.”</p><p>He ruffled a little — probably more for Clamshell's honour than his. She had been a present ghost in the trees today, not that Esha had any plans to bite down on her words.</p><p>“Still,” Atarangi said, “If serpents cultivate any amount of lungta plants, I'd be glad to establish moderate-scale trade with them. It'd make negotiations of all kinds easier if I have more to work with than Clamshell's troves and my own pockets.”</p><p>Shaking her head, Esha said, “Yaah, you want to talk to every creature on legs, don't you?”</p><p>“Not at all — the legs aren't required.” Rising, Atarangi said, “I'm going to fill the water pail. If serpents return with news, do let me know.”</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next time Sureness and Nimble surfaced, they clicked about <em>permissions</em> and <em>protocols</em> and a context of <em>circles</em> that Esha couldn't get grip on. Atarangi and Rooftop took care of the rest of the negotiations; that was why Esha hired them.</p><p>They approached a temporary exemption, Atarangi explained over dinner lentils. An invitation to deal with serpent society, despite the indiscretion of being humans.</p><p>“They aren't typically so forthcoming with our kind,” Atarangi said, weighted sad. “Serpents deal with phoenixes, where the two encounter each other. Allowing trade with us seems to involve the bending of phoenix trade rules.”</p><p>“To get my khukuri back?”</p><p>It was a pitiful request and Esha knew it; Atarangi tightened her mouth around bad news.</p><p>“<em>Kin,”</em> Rooftop told her, <em>“your knife has just one song-flower, yes?”</em></p><p>“A flower worth more than I can pay. But yes.”</p><p>“<em>Flowers wither-die in cold wind. That always happens, every four seasons.”</em> He shuffled to Esha's side, plucking at her shirt sleeve with a gentle beak. <em>“Maybe new flowers will grow; you can pick those.”</em></p><p>It was true, he was right and Esha hated it with a coolness like a round stone.</p><p>“I haven't made a habit of giving up,” was all she said.</p><p>“We'll try,” Atarangi assured her. “Once we know what circumstances we're even trading under.”</p><p>Word would come within eight pulses, Sureness told them. They were advised to stay in the vicinity of the serpents' pond and wait for word.</p><p>The thought made Esha's imagination take hold. Thoughts of serpents proceeding like nobles, in groups armoured by guards and by authority. If Sureness was any typical serpent size, Esha didn't want to see that; it made her stale old fears glow like hot iron.</p><p>She passed the time helping Atarangi study the serpents' fin language. They sat with heads uncovered, the wind a treat on Esha's skin while she scratched in the dirt, etching out evocations of Sureness and Nimble's piscine movements. Atarangi dug in her cart to produced slightly creased bamboo paper and pine ink, and they wrote their gathered ideas more permanently.</p><p>“Making this your sixth language, are you?” Esha asked.</p><p>“I believe I will. It doesn't seem that anyone else on Tselaya Mountain has a distinction like that.”</p><p>“When you claim that you speak five languages, do folk ever ask you to prove it? I'd like to see you speak serpent for them. Or your squid language.”</p><p>That yanked a laugh from Atarangi, golden and honest. “I'd like that a lot.”</p><p>They were gathering the pages into some semblance of order when movement splashed in the pond. No procession of serpents came out — just a round object floating in the middle of the water, the shape and colour of a potato but glinting like no root could. Rooftop flew out to it with claws ready to snatch but he thought better of committing himself to an unidentifiable object, and instead fluttered laboriously over the thing while he kicked the floating, bobbing thing toward shore. Atarangi bared her feet and waded out to pick it up.</p><p>The object was a glass-like ornament, a glossy bubble of material light enough for Atarangi to turn on lax fingertips. The bubble had a formed loop on its bottom — a fixing point for the paper-thin facet of metal dangling underneath.</p><p>“Oh,” Esha blurted, “a metal sheet. They write on those — Nimble showed me.”</p><p>Atarangi hummed curious, still handling the whole assembly like a porcelain relic while she turned the pockmarked metal to the light.</p><p>“Addressed to— Hold on.” She fished a green sweetmeat from her cloak to chew on. “Addressed to the Human Triad. Triad? I suppose myself and you two?”</p><p>“<em>Triads are like flocks, maybe,”</em> Rooftop said.</p><p>“Such seems reasonable.” Atarangi went on, “These individuals have been granted exemption under ... I think that's a numerical legal precident — At the recommendation of the venturer Sureness of ... something Triad. A musical scale ...?”</p><p>“I'm not paying you enough to translate this,” Esha muttered.</p><p>“I'm inclined to agree. Rooftop? Come here, kin.” She knelt, turning the metal leaf to him. “What do you make of this notation here? Is that music?”</p><p>He stared, and tipped his head, and flexed his crests in considering waves. <em>“Looks like music. Orange-spoken music.”</em> He creaked a string of notes that came together in Esha's ears as <em>Azure</em>.</p><p>“Azure Triad. I hope they don't mind that translation.” Atarangi went silent, her eyes raking along the rest of the text. After a long moment, she said, “The Deepling Community will consider collaboration with the Human Triad, pending security evaluations. Sufficient service to the Community may be rewarded.”</p><p>“With my khukuri's return?”</p><p>“Possibly. Or striking Clamshell's troubles from their record. Or maybe possibilities no human has ever laid eyes on.” Atarangi looked up at Esha, a plainly honest look without her mask obscuring it. “Keep your mind flowing like water, sister.”</p><p>Esha <em>did</em> need to stop fussing over something she likely wasn't getting back. She looked at the needled ground, and nodded.</p><p>The water rippled then, and serpent frills broke the pond's surface. Sureness broke first, laying his black eyes on Esha and Atarangi before rising fully. He came to the pond's edge, followed close by Nimble. They represented Azure Triad, it seemed; Sureness was some sort of guardian provider, and Nimble was the triad's heart if not its common sense. That only left the question, Esha realized, of who their third member was.</p><p>She and Atarangi signed namaste to them. The serpents responded with their own hallowed greeting, a vibrating of fins plus a dip of their coiled bodies that was nearly like a bow.</p><p>“<em>Query: those ones received the message?”</em> Sureness asked.</p><p>“We did,” Atarangi said. “We would be honoured by any accommodations your Community can make for us.”</p><p>Leaning onto her less sore leg, Esha gathered her will to speak. “I'd like to ask a question, if I may.”</p><p>“<em>Permission: granted,”</em> Sureness tapped.</p><p>“What are these unusual circumstances you're talking about? Is it the earthquakes ...? We've had a lot, these past weeks — humans' buildings and roadways are damaged from it, so I thought ...”</p><p>She didn't expect the reaction: Sureness's fins all rising like hackling hair, before he turned to Nimble for frenetic fin-signing and clicking and barbel braids. He turned back slow, and stiffer.</p><p>“<em>Statement: those ones must pass security evaluation before the information may be shared.”</em></p><p>“<em>Suggestion:“</em> Nimble clicked, peering around Sureness's fins, <em>“full disclosure cannot happen. But I wish to show those ones my project.”</em></p><p>Sureness held his teeth tight.</p><p>“<em>Suggestion: it would impart a sense of scale? Contextualized?”</em></p><p>Sureness flicked his smallest barbels.</p><p>“<em>Suggestion: only this one's ( ) lichen.”</em></p><p>“<em>Permitted,”</em> Sureness said.</p><p>With a garbled, excited clicking along the lines of <em>one moment; I'll retrurn; wait until those ones lay eyes on it</em>, Nimble dove back into the green pond depths. He popped back up a moment later and came to Esha and Atarangi on whip-quick slithering — holding out a dripping chunk of richly blue-purple stone. It was plain greystone encrusted with growing matter, some lichen or fungus in a colour dyemakers would sell their shoes for.</p><p>“Great waves,” Atarangi breathed. Gradually, like asking permission, she laid fingertips on the lichen-thing's crusty edges.</p><p><em>“Proclamation: this one is assisting with the lungta production,”</em> Nimble chattered. <em>“These root-growings will be held in esteem by the physicians.”</em></p><p>A bone-chilling scrape came from Sureness's mouth; Nimble wilted like cold-touched petals.</p><p>But still, Nimble had a growing rock to show them, a rock he bent to let Rooftop inspect. With meek, steady toothtaps, he even called an invitation to Clamshell, who alighted in a pondside tree long enough to stare like a polearm blade.</p><p>Staring at the growing rock's violet patterns, Esha couldn't begin to guess where this negotiation was going to lead. All she hoped was that she wouldn't need to walk there.</p><p>Two hours later, Sureness and Nimble returned with a dimpled metal sheet for proof: the Human Triad was permitted into their underground.</p><p>“<em>Imperative: these ones must descend now,”</em> Sureness said. <em>These ones</em> rang oddly, a broader sense more like <em>we</em>. <em>“The individuals poised to meet these ones have many broader responsibilities.”</em></p><p>“That's fine,” Atarangi said.</p><p>Esha thought again of gilded nobles, but she nodded.</p><p>Sureness and and Nimble began a procedure then — although what it was, Esha couldn't begin to guess. They slithered around the pond's edges, fish fins dragging like old sacks, and they touched patches of earth with their barbels. They clicked and gestured and used rock-related ideas that an earthreading scholar might have understood. Rooftop followed them through treetops, listening, watching every motion.</p><p>After intense discussion, Sureness and Nimble stood opposite other, under pine trees' canopy. Their concentration strung the air bright like flags: it called Esha and Atarangi's attention even as they tried to load the wheeled pack, as they packed their tarpaulins and belt-holstered tools and other things not needed for diplomatic discussion. The two serpents bent again. They stayed bent, staring, focused.</p><p>Tremors ran through the ground at Esha's feet — unfamiliar ones, motions that reminded her of digging with her own hands even while she braced on hands and knees against the brown-needled ground.</p><p>“Esha,” Atarangi called, “it's our friends' doing! Look!”</p><p>Atarangi must have traded her mind away because she climbed back to her feet and, over the still-shaking earth, she went toward the serpents. They now bent shoulder to shoulder — bent downward where flat ground had just been.</p><p>As fast as her malformed feet and walking pole could carry her, Esha went to the serpents, too. Sureness and Nimble bent, fins quivering, into a tunnel that yawned where solid ground used to be. The tremors grew stronger with every step closer because they were <em>digging</em> somehow, mining without ever putting shovel to earth.</p><p>The shaking stopped after a long moment. Waving their neck fronds, Sureness and Nimble circled away to let Atarangi peer inside.</p><p>“<em>Query: those ones can traverse such an angle?”</em></p><p>“Esha, look! You too, Rooftop!”</p><p>He dropped onto her shoulder on spread wings — which must have hurt, without her cloak to catch Rooftop's claws, but Atarangi bubbled with too much enthusiasm to care.</p><p>Breathing an oath, Esha joined them both and gazed down into the dark. It was a tunnel graded downward, curving leftways — like their very own spiral road carved down into the middle of Tselaya.</p><p>“I think we can manage that,” Atarangi told the serpents. “This is incredible! How ...?!”</p><p>Sureness clicked a statement — <em>earth-shifting</em>, it sounded like.</p><p><em>“Statement:”</em>, Nimble admonished him, <em>“humans are barely capable of earthshifting.”</em></p><p>“We— We can't do <em>that </em>— move things outside ourselves, that is. Have you ever heard of anyone shifting earth, Esha?”</p><p>“Nothing that the arbiters could confirm.”</p><p>“Yes, precisely. We—“ and Atarangi grasped for words with the furrow of her brow, “we use lungta inside our bodies. For strength in our arms and legs, or for maintaining vigor for long periods of time. We only extend it to speak. Such as right now.”</p><p>Silence from the serpents: they stared, fins minutely shifting.</p><p>“<em>Query:“</em> Nimble asked, <em>“without earthshifting, how are you capable of cultivation?”</em></p><p>“<em>Admonishment: we depart. Discuss this in transit.”</em></p><p>Clamshell refused to join them; she sat watching, hawkish, from the safety of a tree. That left Atarangi with Rooftop on her shoulders, and Esha tottering on her fading legs, to follow Sureness and Nimble down into their impossible passage.</p><p>The rock floor was smooth as if thousands of feet had polished it; the declining angle was pleasing to Esha's toes that tried to be hooves, yet it strained her ankles and knees until their pain burned away everything else. Esha sat on the wheeled pack, chewing pain herbs; Atarangi pulled back against the pack's wheels, refusing to accept an apology.</p><p>The serpents snaked on ahead, leading the way downward. Daylight faded and spots wavered in Esha's vision — some of which turned out to be pinpoint lights on the serpents, tips of their fins and barbels that glowed like candles under paper shades. Each flick of their fins was a bright-outlined signal in the dark.</p><p>They came to dead ends, periodically. Sureness and Nimble applied themselves and parted the earth, making it pour aside and away as though invisible water washed through it. More path revealed itself.</p><p>After one such earthshifting, they faced a plane of glittering-still water. Nimble twisted his body to eye Esha and Atarangi.</p><p>“<em>Query: humans prefer to breathe air?”</em></p><p>Blinking, Atarangi opened and closed her mouth. “Ah, yes. We can only breathe air. If a human tries to breathe water, we ... we die very quickly. Phoenixes are the same.”</p><p>Tapping his teeth, light and rapid like fingernails on a tabletop, Nimble thought. He and Sureness conversed with rapid flickering. Esha strained her lungta and understood what she could: it was a cascade of words with <em>air</em> and <em>water</em> in them.</p><p>Sureness then clicked a interrogative: <em>“Can those ones breathe air that is extremely humid?”</em></p><p>“Yes,” Atarangi said as though hesitant to commit to the word. “As long as it <em>is</em> air.”</p><p>“<em>I can't swim,”</em> Rooftop said, possibly to himself.</p><p>Sureness chittered a sigh. <em>“Assurance: ( )-Eight District has dry spaces that should be suitable for those ones. As for this passage ...” </em></p><p>With light-waving fins, he and Nimble kept discussing.</p><p>Eventually, Nimble dove into the pitch blackness. Moments later, a sensation ran through the stone floor; it was too faint to call a tremor but still, it closed Esha's throat with terror. The water gurgled away. They carried on.</p><p> </p><p>After what felt like hours, Sureness and Nimble earthshifted a wall face that didn't grind solid: it shattered, collapsing into a pile of stone chunks that Sureness swept to one side with his tail. They were in a cave — and, hobbling in under her own power, Esha found a cave nothing like the fusty hole she had expected.</p><p>No, the walls around her were as textured as any temple's stones would be, marked with patterns Esha dimly recognized as serpent writing. Coiling lines were interspersed with holes large enough to lodge a young bamboo pole. Up the walls and across the cavern ceiling, hazy glass bubbles hung suspended from copper threads, full of a blue-tinted inner light. Esha was in a place as deliberately made as any town full of buildings. Her hands rose to her mouth, and her gaze followed the ceiling's grand lines up and outward until she couldn't ignore the serpents gathering near — <em>many</em> more, a wall of undulating pond colours.</p><p>The largest newcomer spoke to Sureness, who flickered occasional response. These new serpents looked like guards, said Esha's gut. Guards, or else soldiers. They wore no armour and carried no polearms, but their stiff bearing and steel tones said they were guards. Each one held metal sheets in their neck barbels, sticking out like quill pens tucked into a clerk's headwrap.</p><p>After nerve-strung moment, Sureness's teeth began to clack and Esha's lungta translated:</p><p>“<em>Admonishment: we ignore our guests. Proclamation: let us speak with toothtap and rudiment fins, so those ones may understand. They apologize for their crudeness, but most forms of braidspeak are incompatible with their physiology, and beyond their understanding.”</em></p><p>Hurt flared in Esha's chest: she wasn't crude for being born a finless human. It was a nearly familiar feeling of indignity, a feeling like counting goat hairs in the mirror — but at least none of these serpents stared much at her bared horns and ears. Their gazes stayed mostly at Esha's hip level. Like her relaxed arms and hands were the most alarming thing they could imagine.</p><p>“<em>Statement:</em>” Nimble tried, his clicking uneven, <em>“these ones are capable of reading basic runes through lungta application. Suggestion: if...”</em></p><p>He trailed off as Atarangi strode forward. She looked as sure as royalty; Rooftop sat on her shoulder, tail feathers spilling down her back like a makeshift cloak. Her lungta-thick voice rustled to command the room:</p><p>“Request: these ones need lodgings, and sparing amounts of Deepling patience. Statement: Humans suffer from cold if we do not cover our bodies. Humans speak almost entirely with our mouths and any dishonesty will come from there. Request: try to understand. In exchange, these ones will provide what lungta two humans can.”</p><p>Quiet bolted through the gathered serpents, a lull in a windstorm.</p><p>“<em>Statement:</em>” Rooftop croaked into the quiet, <em>“these humans are this-one's closest allies. These ones are worthy of trust.”</em></p><p>His words moved serpent fins.</p><p>“<em>Query:”</em> the lead guard clicked at them both, paced out as though for a child, <em>“why do these ones pursue serpent affairs?”</em></p><p>“Statement: dealings with a landholder phoenix led Human Triad to these ones. Now, this one believes that Human Triad and Deepling Community might benefit from each other.”</p><p>“<em>Query: is that benefit meant to be the provision of binder-food? Simple grass seed with less than ( ) rises of lungta per ( )?”</em></p><p>Atarangi hesitated. Offering popped maize wasn't usually met with spite; Esha felt that chill of confusion, too.</p><p>“Statement: there are many more plants these ones might offer. Request: tell us which are valuable to the Community. This plant, for example.”</p><p>She came to the wheeled pack and nudged Esha's legs aside, to open the side compartment full of lock-boxed plants.</p><p>“This plant,” she repeated, and flicked open locks as she strode sure into the brunt of serpent attention.</p><p>They watched, postures coiling wary. Then as Atarangi opened the box — and lifted out the wilting but whole bankakri flower — the serpents relaxed like the welcome warmth of spring.</p><p> </p><p>The negotiations came more freely, once a guard serpent accepted the boxed bankakri flower and bolted quicksilver away. Atarangi gave their names — including a more mangled version of her own name, Water Light, since <em>morning</em> wouldn't seem to fit through lungta's discerning mesh and <em>sky</em> garnered reactions like it was serpent profanity. Rooftop's name didn't translate, either: he became Ceiling, a word Esha supposed was a compliment. Serpent ceilings were beautifully decorated, if nothing else.</p><p>Soon, the lead guard serpent issued small-circuit security clearance to two humans and a phoenix, they who are Human Triad. With their stone leaves full of earthshifted writing, the guard serpents dispersed, to disappear into water pools at the room's corners. Some of the guards slipped into the water but circled immediately back out, and took posts along the walls where they stood sentinel, watching.</p><p>Sureness was the only guard serpent by their sides now; Nimble's fins trembled with the exertion of waiting and Sureness wound a barbel brief into his, a sharing of calm. Then they both circled away.</p><p>Another wall of serpents waited, with their attentions fixed hopeful on the Human Triad. These ones were closer to Nimble's size, and carrying lumps of glinting metals. As a brave few approached, they shifted their lumps into writing leaves the size of blankets.</p><p>Once Esha understood, she didn't mind their gathering enormity so much: these serpents were scribes. They came to document everything worth knowing.</p><p>They begged attention from Atarangi and Rooftop, the more skilled speakers who had aphorisms worth recording. Esha sat on her wheeled cart, uneasy no matter how she shifted her shrieking joints. But soon, a triad of serpents noticed her and approached, slithering gradual and fluid as though sharp motions might make Esha somehow capable of bolting.</p><p>“<em>Query:“</em> one asked her, <em>“this one is Precious One?”</em></p><p>“Statement: this one is.” Their language demanded a construction effort for even the simplest ideas; Esha hoped she had enough bricks for anything she might want to say.</p><p>“<em>Request: will you answer our queries?”</em></p><p>She supposed she could try.</p><p> </p><p>In the unchanging light of the glass bulbs, she answered their endless questions. About all the reasons she was wearing clothing, and how flexible her hands were, and how she survived in the wind-scoured, light-baked conditions of the surface. It seemed, Esha thought with a patience-sugared amusement, that serpents found humans as hardy as yaks and only a little more intelligent.</p><p><em>“Query:”</em> a scribe asked, <em>“the human species cannot earthshift, not even slight?”</em></p><p>“No, we can't. Lungta is for speaking, and nourishing our bodies. That's mostly it.”</p><p>The flexing fins around Esha spoke one clear message: <em>oh, poor things.</em></p><p>“<em>Assurance:“</em> another scribe clicked, <em>“your kind will reach ( ) advent, in some future pulse.”</em></p><p>That felt like sincerest reassurance — but it was a thought that rippled uncomfortable through the rest of the scribe triad.</p><p>“<em>Addendum: human ones earthshift with muscle-force?”</em> one tried. <em>“With claws, hypothetically?”</em></p><p>“Claws? Oh.” Esha held up her hand to smile at her hoof-thick fingernails. “These aren't claws, they're only nails. Mine are thicker than most humans', but it's no matter: I don't dig with them. We use spades for that, we farmers. It's something I always—“</p><p>Esha was explaining, digging into the pack underneath her and drawing out her farming spade — and in that simple instant, the serpents' pinning fins made no sense. Neither did their scrambling, climbing backward over themselves in panicked loops as their toothy mouths opened and barking cries tore out. Ringed with the chaos, holding the ordinary handle of her farming tool, Esha didn't understand and she sat frozen as a guard serpent darted to the forefront and threw their spread hands against the floor. A force like the entire earth crashed against Esha and she was on the rock ground, pinned, joints stabbed with the impact — and she couldn't move, couldn't even draw a breath.</p><p>“No!” came Atarangi's shout. She ran to a guard with open hands, and her terror-wide eyes locked with Esha's for a heartbeat. <em>“Query: what wrong did she commit?”</em></p><p><em>Statement,</em> the guard was clacking fierce. <em>Weapon. Not tolerate hostility.</em></p><p>“C-Can't,” Esha murmured with what air she had. There was rock curled cold and enormous around her, so tight that she could feel her hammering heart against her emptied lungs.</p><p>“It wasn't— Statement: the situation was misunderstood. Esha, what was your—“</p><p>Their eyes locked again. This time, Atarangi saw the full trouble.</p><p>“Alarm: this human is dying! Release her! Release her body, she needs air!”</p><p>Clicking rang harsher. Black spots consumed Esha's vision. Serpents came wet-sliding to her side and then the pressure was gone, and Esha was staring at wet-speckled rock while gasping deep and thanking each and every god.</p><p>“Esha!” Human hands laid on her, Atarangi's warmth with Rooftop's thin keening above her. “Breathe, kin. Just breathe.”</p><p>“I—I thought ...”</p><p>“It's alright.”</p><p>She left too soon, to ask in a steely voice what the meaning of that was.</p><p> </p><p>The meaning, it turned out after a timeless moment of discussion, was an imagined attack. A glimpse of steel in a human's hand: that typically meant blood spilling a moment later. An idiotic assumption, said Esha's gut. It was a demeaning, gossip-slimy thing to claim, on a mountain where guards carried blades and humans shunned anything not like them.</p><p>The scribes had fled. Esha climbed back onto the wheeled pack, and dug out herb to chew, and waited for her shaking to subside.</p><p>In the shadows of Esha's side vision, a new serpent crept closer.</p><p>“<em>Request:”</em> she asked, clicking quiet and steady as two sewing thimbles, <em>“may this one make queries?”</em> She straightened to full torso-height: she stood barely taller than Atarangi, with a round-eyed face as delicate as a cat's.</p><p>Esha took another deep breath for good measure, deep enough to taste the moisture and must of the cave. She rubbed her face, though her terror tears were already gone. “You may.”</p><p>“<em>Query: that one was unable to respire, despite your head remaining fully freed. Are human lungs not the round nodes on the sides of your heads?”</em></p><p>That took a moment to percolate into understanding. Then Esha buried her forehead in her palm and smiled the widest, purest smile she had ever known.</p><p>“Ears. We call those ears.”</p><p> </p><p>Esha spent more time with Bravery, the new little scribe. Together, they drew ugly but accurate diagrams of humans and serpents, with arrows detailing how each one drew breath.</p><p>“<em>Gratitude:”</em> Bravery told her, rolling the metal leaves into manageable tubes, <em>“this information enriches the Community. Query: may this one ask further queries later?”</em></p><p>With her tired-wobbling vision and her body sore in new and old places, Esha nodded. “I see no reason why not.”</p><p>Atarangi lost her strength soon after that. She sank against the wheeled cart and ate the slightly crushed chapattis Esha passed her.</p><p>“<em>Morning Sky learned a lot today,”</em> Rooftop said, while sharing the pack's sitting space with Esha. <em>“This is a new-growing field for us to take seeds from.”</em></p><p>“That's fine,” Esha said. “I hope I'm not the pigshit turned into the soil, though.”</p><p>“Language,” Atarangi murmured.</p><p>It was the last time she spoke that evening: some serpents dragged mats of green-dense moss over and laid them out as a semblance of human beds. Despite the pond slime smell, it was the most welcome thing Esha had ever laid her head on.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Chapter 21</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time didn't make any more sense when Esha awoke. She felt in her sinews that it was morning. Rooftop tried to explain the serpents' pulses — which were apparently some time-keeping system related to the golden tube along one wall — but he folded his crests confused once Esha asked how long a <em>pulse</em> was supposed to be.</p><p>With water, betel nut and cold rice sitting uneasy in her belly, Esha called a guard serpent over. It made everything inside her shake with fear, her ingrained obedience and her fear of gigantic strangers, too, but she couldn't live in a place where a digging spade was an object of terror.</p><p>“Statement:“ she said uneasy, hoping she was getting the patterns right, “my spade, the metal thing I had earlier. It can't injure anything. Request: I can show you?”</p><p>After fin-folding hesitation, the serpent went to a phalanx of others. They all came, fanning to surround Esha: one held the spade in a tight-wound barbel, high above Esha's reach.</p><p>“You can hold it lower. Statement: it's for growing plants. The edges aren't sharp. You— Query: you must have noticed that it isn't sharp?”</p><p>Surprise rippled through the serpents present. They were astonished that humans were complex enough to plant things and then wait, Esha gathered from their flicking and tendril-folding. Graceful of them to discuss it in front of a yam farmer.</p><p>But they gave the spade back, poised for the consequences. With open hands, Esha reached to the spade's metal edge and put the pad of her thumb against it. She pressed, and then lifted the thumb so the serpents could see the complete lack of blood. They clicked; their snake bodies untensed.</p><p>“We use these to scoop the soil. Because we don't have earth-moving lungta — you recall?”</p><p>“<em>Query:“</em> one clacked, <em>“humans use metal tools for more than aggression?”</em></p><p>“Yaah, yes, we have plenty of tools.” Esha's eyes went wide. “Did you think that every metal thing we hold is a weapon?”</p><p>Around her, leviathans shifted, shrinking like folding up their sensibilities.</p><p>“<em>Statement: the matter has a long history,”</em> one guard said. <em>“Abbreviation: yes.”</em></p><p>Atarangi must have overheard the discussion: she came to Esha's side, with Rooftop still an assistant perched on her bare shoulder. She took over explaining and she used the eloquent words the matter needed.</p><p>Esha listened for a while to Atarangi's summary of human peace talks. Serpents came, offering baskets of lichens and pondweed and even arrays of whole fish dressed with fragrant vinegar; serpents took from these baskets and ate; Atarangi did the same, her hands drifting tempted toward the fish but she apparently had no plans to try swallowing one whole like the serpents did.</p><p>Esha drifted away, chewing the foulness from a lichen branch. She hadn't looked close at the fine-etched walls yet.</p><p>She mostly enjoyed the look of the walls, at first. The lines leading her eyes around the carved pole-holsters. Not a single pole jutted from any wall she could see; maybe, Esha supposed, the holes were only used on occasion. For flags, or torches, or something else she couldn't imagine.</p><p>Esha was considering etchings — and having little luck forcing her lungta to the task — when a guard serpent approached.</p><p>“<em>Query: this one is uninjured?”</em></p><p>This was Sureness, Esha was moderately sure; the sight of his phoenix scar confirmed it.</p><p>“Well, my ribs hurt — they weren't gentle with me. But I'll live.”</p><p>He shrank, all his fins and fronds folding at once. <em>“Apology: this is a failing of Deepling society. Venturers are excessively enthused, at times.”</em></p><p>“Venturers?” The word had crevices in it, meanings too subtle for Esha's betel to push into.</p><p>“<em>Statement: venturers are those who go into the skylight.”</em></p><p><em>Skylight</em> was a word Esha could translate; it felt strangely like <em>cursed </em>or<em> lost</em>.</p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> Sureness went on, <em>“few serpents have the needed attributes to venture. Size and muscle-strength are needed, to intimidate those who would strike serpents down. Earthshifting aptitude is vital. Inclination to panic must not be present.”</em></p><p>It did sound like guard caste — except with a missive to explore, not to simply pace circles around known territory. And without an inclination to bother low-castes. And, Esha guessed, Sureness probably didn't expect rupee bribes.</p><p>“It sounds like you've got an honourable position,” Esha tried.</p><p>She meant it as a beige, neutral statement. But Sureness flared his fins and clicked gratitude. Honour, Esha had to remind herself, was something to want.</p><p> </p><p>Sureness stayed at her side while she limped along the District's round walls. He explained some of the written meanings. There was a hatchery all serpent eggs hailed from. There was a time of life where hatchlings wandered the Community, studying every etched word that serpent society had to share. There were fountain-like pulses of water within Tselaya, which serpents directed into tubes and measured time with. All of it seemed like enough to fill a library to its roof beams.</p><p>As Esha's steps slowed, Sureness offered his largest right barbel to lean on. It didn't look sturdy but, Esha found, it bore her weight as well as any sure-fastened selfrope.</p><p>Nimble joined them. He chattered delight at the things Esha had learned; he suggested reading further.</p><p>“<em>Statement: learning abounds!”</em> He then extended a barbel into a pole holster, leaning to stuff the appendage in as far as it would go, beaming open-mouthed at Esha.</p><p>“Learning? Wait a moment — what are these holes for?”</p><p>“<em>Statement: stories dwell within! Enrichment!”</em></p><p>Esha stared, with her own mouth open to match. “Are there ... carvings in there?”</p><p>“<em>Assessment: humans cannot use story-passages,”</em> Sureness said, quiet with disappointment.</p><p>“Well, <em>no</em>— I don't have anything on me that'll fit.” Esha shuffled to the next story passage over, and stuck her fingers in until her hand stuck tight. Ridges met her fingers: she just didn't have the right lungta in her belly to shape sense out of them. Earthshifting, she reminded herself. It was an incredible skill, something more suited to demons or gods than to people.</p><p>“<em>Regret:“</em> Nimble said, tugging himself free of the wall, <em>“this one and her Triad cannot read story passages.”</em></p><p>“<em>Regret:“</em> came a demure clicking behind him, <em>“humans would benefit from doing so.”</em></p><p>Bravery approached: she had been lingering a stone's throw away for some moments, listening with more curiosity than grace. She stared up at Nimble and Sureness with eyes like the lungta-shining sky. <em>“Query: has this human been informed of the Deflected Words?”</em></p><p>Nimble tightened his looped self. <em>“Objection:“</em> he clacked, <em>“that knowledge would not aid the Human Triad.”</em></p><p>“<em>Rebuttal:“ </em>Sureness clicked mild,<em> “it might.” </em></p><p>Pausing, letting the gravity steep in, Bravery regarded Esha. <em>“Proposal: this one aspires to her name. She has achieved little toward its validity. Ergo: this one will recount the Deflected Words events that both humans and Deeplings might avert their attentions from.”</em> She wound away. <em>“Request: follow. Hear me.”</em></p><p>Unsure if she wanted to or if she was simply obeying, Esha followed. Sureness matched her pace, barbels a net of support; Nimble slunk along by Esha's other side.</p><p>Her fins standing sure now, Bravery stopped at a story passage and gazed into its word-heavy depths.</p><p>“<em>Assurance: ask any hatchling beginning to study the storied walls, and they will tell you of the Deflected Words. Statement: that event occurred over five million pulses ago, when this deep-born breed commenced extending the Community to ( )-( ) elevation. One triad went into skylight to gather surface-pond plants. Then humans came.”</em></p><p>Bravery turned her bright eyes to Esha. They nearly looked sad.</p><p>“<em>Statement: the triad stood in the shallows, offering words. Emphasis: words. But contradiction: the humans would not listen. They bared weapons.”</em></p><p>“Really?” Esha said. “The serpents didn't menace the humans at all?” The story ran counter to everything Esha had ever heard, every story called plausible by a town arbiter.</p><p>“<em>Statement: one serpent escaped. That one was mentally shattered from the experience. But he testified that his triad made no aggressive overtures.”</em></p><p>Esha had nothing to say. Her Kanakisipt grandparents hadn't even been born at that time — she guessed, since five million pulses sounded like a lot. “That's all you know about it?”</p><p>“<em>Statement: it is. The incident has been discussed in all the pulses since, by every student of our philosophy. Quandary: how can an individual know what is objectively true?”</em></p><p>Esha certainly couldn't. She looked away into the glass-lit dampness. For all the times other humans spoke fears of serpents, she would have imagined actual attacks were made. Maybe not fueled by malice — maybe just from the two breeds startling one another in the forest. Or from one hungry serpent not fussy about its meal, and supposing humans to be simple pests<em>.</em></p><p>Her legs hurt. So did her head.</p><p>“<em>Supposition: the Deflected Words was an event we must continue to discuss. If we cannot understand the past, it will inevitably return to plague us.”</em></p><p>Sureness clacked irritable. <em>“Statement: the story is told. Query: what do you wish Precious One to glean?”</em></p><p>Gathering her thoughts, Bravery relaxed her poise; she was a tall candle melting from its own flame. <em>“Statement: this one wished to tell a human of the Deflected Words. Hypothesis: since serpents secret ourselves from humans, they may not know. They may not have preserved the information.”</em></p><p>“I didn't know,” Esha admitted. “There's a lot I don't know. But it seems that friends' patience and a slathering of lungta can fix it.”</p><p>Bravery looked again into the story passage. <em>“Assurance: that is a wise answer.”</em></p><p>“<em>Bravery,”</em> Sureness intoned.</p><p>“<em>Suggestion: those ones should tell the Human Triad of our Abyssal!”</em></p><p>“<em><span class="u">No.”</span></em></p><p>Glowering with spread fins — at the rude phrasing, Esha was tentatively sure — Bravery clicked, <em>“Statement: it must be done. When asking for trade accords, one's goals must be transparent.”</em></p><p>“<em>Rebuttal: they do not need to be burdened with the knowledge.”</em></p><p>“<em>Suggestion:“</em> Nimble tapped small, <em>“maybe they should be burdened with it. Then those ones may more effectively assist us with our burden.”</em></p><p>“That sounds reasonable,” Esha said. In purest honesty, she was losing the will to care; the thought of pain herb and steaming hot millet was calling to her.</p><p>“<em>Assertion: my goal has been accomplished.”</em> Bravery settled all over, like relief escaping from under her fins. <em>“Request: Azure Triad, tell the Human Triad why we are striving to establish relations. Precious One, consider well what you are told.”</em></p><p> </p><p>Sureness and Nimble escorted her back to the spiral ramp landing. This was no time to lie to herself: Esha appreciated the company. She wanted even more of it, wanted to find Atarangi and Rooftop and Clamshell's chick and maybe even Clamshell, to ring herself with like a house full of tied-leaf dolls.</p><p>“Query:“ Esha asked, “you're going to do what Bravery said, aren't you? Tell us the whole foundation of this trade effort? Or, rather, tell Atarangi and Rooftop — they're the diplomats.”</p><p>“<em>Observation: this one acknowledges the phoenix as a thought-sure being.”</em></p><p>“Well, yes. He's been fine company.” Esha shrugged. “So have you. Gods, if any of my field sisters heard me speaking this way, they'd think my goat traits have taken me over.”</p><p>Esha reined in her tongue — feeling foolish as a puppet, wondering whether to explain. But Sureness simply unwound his barbels from her arms, and balanced her back on her feet, and bade her to rest well.</p><p>Nimble still stood by her, coiled uneasy, flicking his gaze between Sureness's departing water ripples and Esha's moving face.</p><p>“<em>Prediction: Sureness is going to apply for further exemptions.”</em></p><p>Esha put fingertips to her temples, to make dents in either side of her headache. It didn't help much but she satisfied herself with the slipping of long hair and rough fur through her fingers, and the damp air touching them both. Her damned goat ears flicked at the movement; she didn't touch those.</p><p>“I'm sure there'll be more exemptions and bargains and gods know what,” she said.</p><p>“<em>Declaration: now that Human Triad is permitted in the Community, this one may show you additional growing projects!”</em></p><p>Esha frowned. “Can you show me tomorrow? I'm tired.”</p><p>“<em>Request: this one has been anticipating ...”</em></p><p>Casting a look around, Esha didn't see Rooftop's beacon colouring, or any distinctive inch of Atarangi. Which meant they had brought the wheeled pack with them for safe keeping, and Esha had no way of walking her feeble self up kilometres of spiral ramp. For all the friends Esha had found, she was still far distant from some of the simplest things she wanted.</p><p>“I'll look at whatever you'd like,” she told Nimble. “If you can think of a way to get me there.”</p><p>Judging by the way Nimble chittered, Esha had just given him a wealth of gifts.</p><p> </p><p>With eighteen lumps of silvery metal meant for writing leaves, and a show of lungta like watching marble carve itself, Nimble made Esha a wheeled pack of her own. He shaped the metal into curving bars and spoked wheels. Concentrated on the axels with an intensity that crinkled his fish-skinned brow. And then, just like that, Esha had a seat to lower her creaking self onto. Nimble held out his blue-black tail fin, offered — and Esha loathed to grab it, fragile-looking membrane that it was. But the fin held like well-tanned leather, and Nimble began undulating his body, slithering along with cart-wheeled Esha jerking behind him.</p><p>It was so absurd, harnessing him like a plough yak, that Esha bubbled up with laughter every time the wheels jammed against rock corners.</p><p>“You shouldn't be using lungta on things like that,” she said. “Isn't it needed right now?”</p><p>“<em>Statement: this effort comes from Nimble's personal allotment. Also: Precious One, maybe this sight will give you strength? That one changes, transcends? Query?”</em></p><p>This was what friendship was. Esha had starved without it for a while and maybe she forgot, but she couldn't deny it now — that friends humoured one another and shared their tiniest precious sights. Even if the friend was a tar dealer, or a fire-starting bird, or a snake-fish lurking below. Esha had hooves and none of it mattered.</p><p>“If you think I should see it, Nimble, I'm sure it'll do me some speck of good.”</p><p>Nimble drew Esha's carriage down a winding path. It was lit blue by seed-yam-sized glass bubbles glowing against the ceiling, but dim enough to be soothing, dim enough that Nimble's finlights were a discernable garland. At a seemingly ordinary place in the path, Nimble earthshifted a cloth-thin rock wall away, and led further on. Light soaked into the walls from up ahead, light nearly the same white-warm colour as Nimble's finlights.</p><p>Soon, they came to the source of that light: threads rooted into the rocks that glowed like heated iron, except not red or white. They were the cool colour of a summer sky, and just as cool when Esha reached out to touch one.</p><p>“What are these?”</p><p>Nimble turned, slithering over himself in the narrow space, his fins flicking a mixture of emotions. <em>“Statement: These are ( )grasp mushrooms. Pleasing decoration, and a keenly specialized breath-of-life for moving the body. Practical. Precious One, this is only part of my garden. Request: follow with me.”</em></p><p>Esha couldn't say what she had been expecting. A garden like her own empire-enforced patch of earth, maybe — a few humble, leafy stalks that Nimble held more dear than an old-growth tree. The cave Nimble led her to was a completely different vision, and one that stole her breath away.</p><p>Nobles had gardens like this. The richest florists on Tselaya's highest peaks had such tall-swept ceilings, filled underneath with a colourful array of blossoms and leaves and glass-delicate vines. Nimble kept mainly bizarre serpent crops — in watery shades of blue and green and purple, some of them giving off a dusty glow — but Esha didn't need to know what these were to know that they were many, and precious.</p><p>“Good gods,” Esha breathed. She came farther into the garden, through the latticed beams of light — drawn down by bamboo. Hollowheart bamboo, maybe, since she could see a blanched-blue circle of sky. The light hurt her eyes; she bent to consider of one shaggy plant. It bent for her fingertips, a thing like the hybrid child of a cliffside lichen and a fruit tree. “It's beautiful. Did you do all this yourself, Nimble?”</p><p>“<em>Assertion: all of this belongs to Azure Triad.”</em> In the corner of Esha's vision, he swelled with pride. <em>“Request: share insights! Has this one cultivated well?”</em></p><p>“I'd need to know what these <em>are</em>, first.”</p><p>
  <em>“Statement: they are lungta plants! Reserves fit to bolster the Community! That one you scrutinize is notch-fronded ( ), best for intricate speech. The plant beside it is spiritgrasp, best for ( ).”</em>
</p><p>There were even lungta avenues that Esha had never heard of, never applied a word to in her thoughts. The world was a bountiful place, she thought while running leaves through her fingertips.</p><p>“<em>Conclusion: that plant under the harshest light — it is this one's greatest achievement.”</em></p><p>Esha's breath caught in her throat. Before her, haloed with sunlight and hung with shadow, was a sesame plant more robust-looking than anything Esha had ever grown.</p><p>“<em>Explanation: this plant's seeds were given to Azure Triad in a day's ration. This one planted a few exempted seeds instead, and read walls until growing parameters were found. And this one added more light tubes. We feared it would die without its hostile typical environment, but I was able to redirect enough harshlight!”</em></p><p>“Th-This ...” Esha took a furred leaf between careful fingers. “Low-ranking humans grow these. Men and women as simple as I am, in our gardens beside our houses. You want plants like this?”</p><p>Touch laid on Esha's shoulders — Nimble's barbels, as relaxed as rope. He shifted to Esha's side and here were his fish eyes, round and honest as ever. <em>“Plea: these are valuable, Precious One! The seeds of this plant have apt lungta for limb dexterity and also for increasing a healthshifter's precision.” </em></p><p>Healthshifting. If that was remotely like earthshifting, then the serpents were gods secreted away in the dark.</p><p>“<em>It was an honour,”</em> Nimble went on, <em>“to savour five seeds between my teeth and keep as many for this own garden.”</em></p><p>“An honour?”</p><p>“<em>Affirmative!”</em></p><p>Esha pressed her mouth. Powers like gods, but yet one heaped handful of sesame seeds would be a revelation to the serpents. Esha could buy that much for pocket money.</p><p>“Humans grow many fine plants,” she said. “Some of them are so valuable, they're locked away where a low-rank like me could never hope to lay eyesight on them. You could do a lot if you swallowed plants like that — clever folk like you.”</p><p>Nimble's touch vanished. He slithered away, and bent toward a tiered colony of lichens.</p><p>“<em>Aspiration: this one wants to see such plants. Any and all! Query: if that one obtains rare seeds or cuttings, please show this one. Such opportunity would mean the deeps to me.”</em></p><p>Nimble wheeled her back to the spiral ramp's base. This time, Atarangi and Rooftop stood prominent, within a semi-circle of serpents who watched her mouth and hand movements, rapt.</p><p>“Atarangi,” Esha told her when she finally approached, “sister, let's go back to our surface. I want a hot meal.”</p><p>Her face had never been more honest. “That sounds like heaven.”</p><p> </p><p>Never again would Esha take steaming-fresh grain for granted. She and Atarangi hurried rice and boiled yam into their mouths, blowing steam through stiff-arched lips.</p><p>“<em>You kin don't like the serpents' food?”</em> Rooftop asked. He waited on restless-shuffling feet for his own yams to cool.</p><p>“It tastes alright,” Esha mumbled around her scorching mouthful. “S'just always cold.”</p><p>“Mm, I agree.” Atarangi gulped and spoke more graceful. “They make leaf-dressings like nothing I've ever tasted — but fire and cooked food don't seem to be a fixture for serpents, as it is for humans.”</p><p>A fixture: that was an apt way to put it. Esha shook her head. “If I had known getting my khukuri back would be such a legendary effort, I never would have darkened your door, sister.”</p><p>“Aren't you glad you did, though?”</p><p>“I suppose so, yes.” That fell honest from Esha's lips. “Forgive my lie, if you would. The climbing, the hauling ... I'd do it again.”</p><p>“From what I can gather,” Atarangi said, glowingly pleased, “the serpents recently hatched a large clutch of eggs. It's a community event, everyone hatching their eggs together.”</p><p>Rooftop trilled. <em>“I like it. Sounds like kin-family. Can we ask to see the hatchery?”</em></p><p>Atarangi scratched his ruff in answer. “They've been feeding the new hatchlings, and also shifting new living spaces, new aquaducts to farm algae and deepwater pond weed — all typical burdens on the serpents' lungta crops. Then, around three months ago, a medical procedure came into being.”</p><p>Esha frowned.</p><p>“I agree,” Atarangi said, “that's no answer. There's treasure at the bottom of that sea. Whatever this procedure demanded unusual amounts of lungta, and it's related to all the earthquakes lately ... That's all I've been able to discern.”</p><p>“The ... Abyssal? One of the scribes told me a morsel of gossip she shouldn't have. Sureness is trying to get us clearance to be told what the entire trouble is. Yaah, even the emperor's nearest aide isn't so tight-lipped.”</p><p>Pausing, thinking, Atarangi relished her rice. “Whatever the serpents' trouble is, we should draw our own lines of permission. Are we willing to continue trading maize, vegetables, herbs ...?”</p><p>Esha nodded; Rooftop bobbed.</p><p>“I'd expect no less. However, if they need enormous quantities of lungta ...”</p><p>“We can't pull that from our own satchels.”</p><p>“No.” Eyes narrowing with a smile, Atarangi said, “How loyal are we to our fellow humans, Esha? A few trades among blackflags are no trouble, a few slights to this Empire we live under. But the serpents eagerly took your khukuri. Its orchid must be valuable to them.”</p><p>“Did you manage to ask about it?” Then, like a bolt from heaven, Esha said, “No, actually. Don't tell me. And if you haven't asked about it, don't bother.”</p><p>“You feel that it's gone?”</p><p>“It's ...”</p><p>She sighed. Rooftop tossed a yam chunk down his throat and then flexed smiling crests at her.</p><p>“I don't want the khukuri back anymore. Let the serpents have it, if it'll actually make one godsdamned bit of difference to their.”</p><p>Nodding, Atarangi scraped a last bite of rice onto her fingertips. “And what do you think, Clamshell?”</p><p>Esha didn't need to turn around to know the intent-glowing eyes in the tree behind her.</p><p>“<em>The watersnakes have not black-watched my territory since you dove into the earth-hole. I give no flame to the serpents, none flickering-plucked from my tail ... But you kin talk yellow-wound-sense.” </em></p><p>Atarangi vanished that evening. She was there when Esha dropped her head to her bedroll, and she was gone from cold blankets when Esha rose. The wheeled pack was gone with Atarangi — but, always one to provide, she didn't leave Esha hungry. Rooftop fluttered onto her wheeled-chair to show her: Atarangi left a breakfast's worth of millet on the seat.</p><p>She returned while Esha was pouring pond water onto the snarling cooking embers. Atarangi's cloak looked odd, even larger than usual around her frame — but she smiled with weary delight and lifted both sides, for Esha to see all the bulging pockets.</p><p>“That's all the rupees I have,” she said. “Until my next Empire stipend, or until I scratch up a translation deal.”</p><p>“Or until we sell our shoes.”</p><p>“I would <em>truly</em> rather not. We need to make this last. But still — use it if you need to. Share it, give it to Nimble to tinker with, I don't know.”</p><p>She reached under her cloak, behind her own shoulder blades, and after some squirming produced a thick packet of pig leather. Inside was a pile of herbs, every pain herb Esha knew and some new ones, besides.</p><p>“That,” Atarangi said, “definitely needs to last.”</p><p>They pulled away the yankvine mat covering the spiral ramp, and began the descent. Esha was just wedging a rock under her chair's wheels — and mustering her strength to help Atarangi pull the cover smooth above their heads — when tremors gathered.</p><p>Earthshifting, Esha hoped in a frozen moment. Maybe it was a serpent earthshifting, but the earthquake took hold too strong for that. She and Atarangi stumbled to the passage walls, and crouched. With the yankvines blotting out the sky, Rooftop couldn't fly; he only huffed rapid until it was over.</p><p>They were fortunate that the passage didn't cave in. They were fortunate that, lower down, the collapsed rocks were few and scattered enough to climb over, and drag Esha's chair past. And once they reached the entrance to Deepling Community, they only needed to wait a few moments. All around, rigid-finned serpents slithered fast as garter snakes, and passed writing leaves, and put their barbels to cracks in the history-laden walls. But still, Sureness arrived, veering wide around shards of a broken light bubble.</p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> he clacked hard, <em>“Human Triad's clearance to meet the Abyssal has been granted.”</em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Chapter 22</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Esha didn't know what to expect. Serpent society didn't seem to know, either. The food serpents paused in their hurried circuits, frill-flicking what looked like greetings — before a swarm of other venturers shooed them away and demanded to inspect Esha and Atarangi's hands.</p><p>Esha considered explaining, as the venturers eyed her hoof-thick fingernails: <em>possible weapon</em> rang in their words. Some god must have been keeping guard over her: the goat's hoof points weren't grown in yet.</p><p>“Statement: human fingernails aren't sharp,” Atarangi volunteered. “Even when we allow them to grow long, they never become pointed claws.”</p><p>The venturers seemed to agree, braiding and clicking, pressing their barbels against Atarangi's fine nails and showing no discomfort.</p><p>“<em>Query:“</em> Sureness offered, mildly present behind them, <em>“how resistant are human nails?”</em></p><p>“How— Query: how hard? Not very. Statement: Human nails split and bend, sometimes during ordinary tasks.”</p><p>“We sound like strange beasts sometimes,” Esha muttered.</p><p>Atarangi hummed agreement. And then she opened her mouth obliging, to show the same lack of predatory efficiency humans had in their teeth.</p><p>After more discussion and explanation and wary prodding with barbels, the venturers declared human bodies a minimal threat.</p><p>“<em>Directives:“</em> one told them, clacked dire. <em>“These ones must speak when the Abyssal queries. These ones must utter no lies, and no insults of any similar kind. Lastly: the Abyssal is the greatness of depths. The Abyssal is many and venerable. Make no base presumptions.”</em></p><p>“Request: elaborate. Which base assumptions?”</p><p>The venturer shifted fins; it bought time in which to think. <em>“Observation: humans have ... rigid concepts of personal being. Make no base assumptions.”</em></p><p>“Statement:“ Atarangi replied, unflinching, “we will strive to comply.”</p><p>As soon as the venturer moved a stone's throw away, Esha leaned to Atarangi.</p><p>“I still don't understand.”</p><p>“They mean, ah. Don't choose words carelessly when you address the Abyssal.”</p><p>Still clear as brick to Esha. “I just won't say anything,” she said.</p><p>“<em>Except if the Abyssal-person addresses you,”</em> Rooftop added, joining the close discussion. His beak felt like a varnished stick against Esha's cheek. <em>“It's a sand-itchy problem ...”</em></p><p>“In a raging storm,” Atarangi said, “the sea floor still exists. If you offend their Abyssal, I'll still be here to negotiate.” She found Esha's hand and squeezed it. “I'm joking. This'll be fine. Just speak as though to a noble, and don't spit out the first thing through your head.”</p><p>That, Esha was fairly sure she could do.</p><p> </p><p>More venturers came, and went, and discussed. Smaller serpents wove between them; leaves were passed like autumn flurries. Esha and Atarangi were led to one room, then another — and it was an utter surprise when they reached the great chamber.</p><p>It was a cavern larger than imagining, like the night sky was a construction diagram for a god's throne room. One half of the room was a still pool of water, a rippling flat plane. Lanterns hung from walls and ceiling, to shed gentle light like a sky full of stars and life.</p><p>Then, the lanterns moved. Esha understood slowly, in snowslide terror, that most of the lights were finlights bristling from the massive creature called Abyssal.</p><p>With a long shuffling — like leather dragged over stone to consume the space — the Abyssal turned toward them and lowered its mansion-sized head nearer. Its chin hung metres above the floor, its barbels falling, winding, into piles. There was so <em>much</em> of it that Esha's mind couldn't find sense until she looked into every glinting eye and picked the two most central ones to hold contact with.</p><p>Aides brought metal lumps to the Abyssal. Its tree-trunk barbels lowered, to grasp the offerings with clusters of smaller barbels like boneless, gelatinous hands. Metal leaves roared at a whisper volume as it earthshifted. Then the Abyssal passed the flattened writing metal back to scurrying, scraping aides, to be brought reverently to Atarangi. She swallowed hard. She looked to the Abyssal like into the faces of her childhood sea-beasts, and then she lifted the Abyssal's cloak-sized message to read it. As though this was an event so auspicious that the documenting of it was folded into the proceedings.</p><p>“Greeting:“ Atarangi read, voice cracking only once. “We know great joys this pulse, sensing the approach of visitors.”</p><p>Atarangi pressed her mouth amused; Rooftop, craned over her shoulder, lifted delighted crests. That seemed to be the entirety of the message.</p><p>“Ah,” Atarangi said careful, “Greeting: these ones are honoured to be standing before You-the-many.”</p><p>Another metal leaf passed through barbels to Atarangi.</p><p>“Recitation: these ones calling themselves Human Triad, you negotiated with a land-claiming phoenix and, through that one, traded goods with my Deeplings. Query: correct?” Atarangi then replied, “Affirmative: we did.”</p><p>The Abyssal held the next metal sheet — simply held it. Staring at it with tandem-flicking pairs of its many eyes. Barbels twitching on its flank, rolling like wind battered them.</p><p>The aides saw the movement and darted to action — picking up blank-flasks and larger pots, laying their barbels in probing patterns on the Abyssal's wall-broad chest. They spoke their veiled fin-frill-braid patterns but tooth clicks interjected, too:</p><p>“<em>Assertion: they cannot—“</em></p><p><em>They,</em> Esha heard in her mind's ear. This Abyssal was called by <em>we</em> and <em>they</em>, simple words that dug toward more.</p><p>The Abyssal still stared through glazed eyes; three round pupils rolled toward the attendants and the behemoth spoke like thunder through clenched, ground teeth:</p><p>“<em>Oncoming.”</em></p><p>They scattered. Venturers came at Esha and her friends with spread fins, snapping<em> back, get back;</em> Sureness was wrapping ropy grip around Esha's arms because her feet weren't moving fast enough. The Abyssal's finlights jerked and noise boomed through the cave from its tail slapping the water flat — like an uncontrollable spasm gripping that enormous being.</p><p>And the noise didn't stop; an earthquake took hold as Esha and Atarangi and Rooftop and slither-flowing multitudes of serpents poured from the chamber. There was nowhere to shelter from the entire crushing earth but the flow of serpents split three ways and Sureness dragged them rightward, into an alcove packed against clammy-cool bodies. Rooftop wheezed; Atarangi murmured; teeth clicked and someone's barbels held Esha tight.</p><p>The shaking subsided a few held breaths later. Serpents unwound from the safe confusion and slid back to their working positions; one of them instead approached Atarangi.</p><p>“<em>Query: this one's triad is unharmed?”</em></p><p>After a hand laid on Rooftop's back, and a prayer of a glance to Esha, Atarangi said, “Affirmation.”</p><p>Esha didn't recall speaking with this particular serpent before — despite their dapples and streaks and watery colouring sticking fairly well in her mind. This serpent wore his duty like a satchel weighing on his back, and he wore a silver wire around his neck — the first jewellery Esha had seen on these ever-sleek folk.</p><p>“<em>Statement: this pulse is no less auspicious for being interrupted. These ones are the first humans to lay sight on the Abyssal's speech tiles. Addition: this one, Ceiling, is the first phoenix to do thusly in over eight hundred thousand pulses. The Abyssal receives few surface beings; most are unworthy to be visitors.”</em></p><p>That explained the confusion, and the excitement, and the scrutinizing of fingernails.</p><p>The serpent tucked his fins tighter. “<em>No further tangent shall this one utter.</em> <em>Statement: the Abyssal requested beforehand that this aide speak on their behalf, if such unfortunate interruption should occur. Our Great Depth grows infirm. Fact: these ones have witnessed the consequences of such a righteous being's infirmity.”</em></p><p>“That earthquake— That was from the Abyssal?!” Esha blurted.</p><p>The serpent gave her a stare like a tin roof: not sharp enough to cut, just dripping.</p><p>“Apologies,” Atarangi said. “Your Great Abyssal is ill?”</p><p>With a little further staring at Esha, the serpent clicked, <em>“Statement: our Great Depth is made of many. In recent pulses, they incorporated additional serpents into their being. Assertion: one of those serpents disobeyed protocol. Result: the Abyssal has contracted a mire fluke.” </em></p><p>Grazing in wet places, Esha thought with a chill.</p><p>“<em>These parasites are removed with a simple process of healthshifting the affected — condition: under common circumstances. The Abyssal is nothing resembling common.”</em></p><p>Bowl-eyed, reaching for herb and pressing crisp edges of it into Esha's hand while she was at it, Atarangi nodded. “No, no — statement: the Abyssal is breathtaking.”</p><p>The serpent bowed his head. <em>“Statement: the transcendance of combining serpents brings holy gifts. Addition: it brings burdens.”</em></p><p>“<em>Colleague?”</em> A small, reedy aide approached. <em>“Statement: Great Depth has been stabilized. They wish to attempt discussion again.”</em></p><p>Clenching his teeth like a bitten oath, the serpent relented. For the second time, Esha, Atarangi and Rooftop were led to see the great, unfortunate soul.</p><p>The Abyssal laid there, their dozens of eyes glassy, their neck full of lung fronds labouring. Where they stretched, Esha could see blue-dark lines like looping veins, shapes that commanded her attention until she recognised them: serpents. Entire serpents, laid together like cobblestones to form a magic-bound behemoth of a god-beast.</p><p>Esha gaped. She stood beside a thrashing thing of incomprehensible lungta arts — but her legs were water and somewhere amid everything, a cord of sympathy tethered her from running. The Abyssal wasn't one unfortunate soul, but many.</p><p>“<em>Apology:“ </em>came their thunderous chorus of a voice on hundreds of glinting teeth<em>, “Did— Not wish—“</em></p><p>They heaved breath. Serpent aides continued pouring pails of water over their back and rubbing salves on their wet-wicking skin.</p><p>“<em>Human, Precious One.”</em></p><p>That was Esha. The enormity knew her name. The rules all leeched out of Esha's mind like water into sand.</p><p>“Yes?” came her voice.</p><p>“<em>The surface flower within that one's cutting tool: that flower had potent corrective lungta. Must request more. Without— W-With—“</em></p><p>Aides waved their barbels; the Abyssal spoke no more, only breathed, and the spokesman serpent beckoned them out.</p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> he clicked low, <em>“without treatment, some of the Abyssal will be lost. In a worst outcome, our entire Abyssal will be lost. Warning: millions of ( ) live within them.”</em></p><p>That gap of a word overflowed with inadequate Grewian meanings: <em>songs, stories, poems, loves, aches, histories</em>.</p><p>“<em>Assessment: The Community would be blinded in our truth's eye.”</em></p><p>Atarangi answered immediate, as Esha knew she would. “Pledge: we will do what we can.”</p><p> </p><p>Esha, Atarangi and Rooftop gathered around another fire and another boiled meal, and began scratching ideas into the dirt. Clamshell brought her chick this time; she sat just beyond the firelight's touch and put millet globs in the chick's seeking mouth.</p><p>“Our pockets definitely won't support this effort,” Esha said. “Not even yours, Atarangi.”</p><p>She hummed, flat but not disagreeing. “I don't believe my influence stretches that high up the mountain, either.”</p><p>“<em>That lungta flower,”</em> Rooftop asked, <em>“we can't find it wild-growing?”</em></p><p>“<em>Burn red, no fuel,”</em> Clamshell said. <em>“All purple-wordsmithing-song flowers of that petal one are in human troves.”</em></p><p>“They are,” Esha said. She stared into her bowl. Memories whipped like blizzard snow. The perfumes of orchid and plum blossom, changing as their soft-pelted petals were chewed. Oiled treewood put out on display for others to envy. The glass ceilings of hothouses glinting like armour. Nobles on High Plateau lived by their negotiations, but also by their coveting of plants that had once grown wild beside gumgrass and gwara spit.</p><p>Humans decided what and who was worthy, as though they had any such godforsaken right. As though they held all of Tselaya in their palms and truly understood its workings, and all its people. Esha had nearly believed it. For all of her life, she had guarded her Kanakasipt khukuri and nearly believed it.</p><p>“Esha?” Atarangi watched her careful. “What are you thinking?”</p><p>Atarangi's beak tip was luminous in the middle of her face. She looked fine without the mask. More people would live whole, peaceful lives if human could loosen their greedy fists and learn how to look a strange ally in the face.</p><p>“I'm thinking,” Esha said, “that <em>I'm</em> from the Kanakisipt house. I've seen where they keep the orchids — they're guarded, Atarangi. Guards patrol around the orchids. Same as rangers snatching up every decent scrap in the forest, like— like low-castes don't <em>deserve</em> more green than a bamboo shoot's edges. But ... even the richest have their guards walk a long route. Can't stare down every treasure at every second of the day.”</p><p>“You're saying ...?” Atarangi knew: her smile was unsure but solid.</p><p>“Maybe ...” This thought chafed Esha's old sense of honour, the proper one she had endured for no gain. “Maybe we should take the orchids back. Just ... take them back.”</p><p>Atarangi and Rooftop considered. And Clamshell kept feeding her chick but her crests swelled with pride.</p><p> </p><p>There were enough pieces to put a plan together. Serpents moved underground and manifested paths wherever they wishes; surely they could get Esha close to a particular building without ever needing to beg passage from a human. Phoenix allies could keep watch for guards and other witnesses. And Esha held gem-valuable memories. With a bamboo sliver in the dirt, she sketched the Kanakisipt home's layout as best she could remember it.</p><p>“This all might have changed,” she conceded. She threw one hand toward the sky, even as she sketched a performance hall's multiple exits with the other. “It's been more than three decades. But they're a tradition-minded family — I don't think they'll have rebuilt Kanakisipt manor just for the sake of it.”</p><p>Atarangi studied the scratchings, brow furrowed. “I can't set foot on High Plateau for this plan, Esha. If I'm caught, I'll be stripped of caste and thrown to the bottom of the mountain.”</p><p>“No, no, you don't need to.”</p><p>“<em>You'll</em> be stripped of caste.”</p><p>“Why should I care? Goats don't need a caste.”</p><p>With a press of her lips, Atarangi tried again. “I don't imagine it'll be easy to earthshift a tunnel right into a well-established property like this... If you need to do legwork, can your legs manage it?”</p><p>Esha yanked off one sock. Reddish-brown goat fur and pitch lumps of hooves were her answer; only a few thumbnail patches of brown human skin showed through.</p><p>“They're hurting less. I think they're nearly done turning.” That meant a cacophony of truths that Esha didn't care to consider just yet. “Hips are hurting now, but I won't pay it mind if you don't. Get me to a wall's edge with a selfrope in my hand, and I'll manage. And if I need to rest, I'll hide first.”</p><p>Nodding, her smile trickling back, Atarangi said, “This sounds like a heart-pumping hunt you've got planned, Esha. We'll need more counsel to make it work, though. Rooftop?"</p><p>“<em>Am your kin.”</em></p><p>“Go visit our serpent friends, if you would. I've got some questions I'd like their answers for.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Chapter 23</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Esha's sandals barely held between her goat toes now. She stuffed them into her satchel, never to be worn again. She wore only her socks, with packing jute wrapped around them to obscure the shape.</p><p>“I'll just make myself out to be elderly,” Esha said, weaving bamboo leaves and sticking them with pine pitch. The effort was different from her dollmaking but the leaves were melding together into a passable enough mask. “No one with a gram of tact accosts a stooped old woman trying to walk on her turning legs.”</p><p>Picking the finer fabrics out of her own supplies, Atarangi looked to Esha. “Even on High Plateau?”</p><p>“They've got decency that high up, I should hope.”</p><p>betel for dye. Fashions some of Atarangi's packing material into a cloak, since it's actually pretty nice fabric.</p><p>“This might draw stares,” Atarangi ventured.</p><p>“It'll draw plenty of stares. Doesn't matter.”</p><p>With thinning lips, Atarangi swallowed more concerns. “If you're stopped by a guard, you should have some sort of contingent. A seamless excuse, or at least a distraction.”</p><p>“Seamless? I'm not a house to be caulked.”</p><p>By the fire, preening her chick while plainly listening, sat Clamshell.</p><p>“I can think of a fine distraction, though.”</p><p>Clamshell pledged her support — she did owe Esha the use of her wings. And as Esha's disguise came together, Rooftop came fluttering back up the spiral ramp Tied into his stringfeather was a silvery leaf of serpent writing, a strange partner to his diplomat's tag.</p><p>Serpents wouldn't need to earthshift new passages, he reported: there were already tunnels leading up to High Plateau's elevation. They were a pilgrimage path leading to a sacred place; clearance to visit that place was granted without any further need to ask.</p><p>“<em>Also,”</em> he said, <em>“Sureness and Nimble give their orange-bright kinship. They want to help.”</em></p><p>“Thank you, dear kin.” Atarangi stroked his neck, so he leaned into the touch. “Esha will need all the allies she can gather.”</p><p>Wrapping her orange-patterned sleeping blanket into a cloak, Esha said, “That's always been true.”</p><p>Down in the Community, the venturers all scrutinized Esha's disguise, and made notes, and asked scribes to amend the notations on the landholder phoenix. Clamshell was going to benefit, Esha realized, from this human-aided orchid theft. Fate had a way of working in circles.</p><p>With Sureness and Nimble flanking her, Esha went before the Abyssal's aides. The sacred path began at the Abyssal's chamber and climbed like a cliff ivy, up into the mountain heights that serpents spoke of with clipped awe.</p><p>The spokesman serpent saw them again; he gave Esha another tin-roof stare but considering this time, black eyes roving over her supplies piled onto a serpent-made wheeled chair.</p><p>
  <em>“Statement: this one suggests an ambitious effort.”</em>
</p><p>Esha chose to take it as a flat-spoken compliment.</p><p>“<em>In addition, however ... Keynote: this is deception against your own race. The taking of lungta plants is also cause for retaliation. Query: will there be repercussions for you, Precious One?”</em></p><p>“If they catch me,” Esha said, flat as tamped snow, “yes.”</p><p>Atarangi's hand laid on Esha's shoulder. “Sister, what a change in you ... But if you're caught with nameplates or property tokens— Well, please let me hold those for you.”</p><p>Untying token-heavy pendant cord from under her clothing, Esha shot a sidelong glance to her. “Don't trade them all for one plate of dumplings.”</p><p>“I'll make no promises,” Atarangi laughed. And she drew Esha into a hug and, briefly, Esha was happy and entirely warm.</p><p>Then Atarangi left, her cloak and topknot an outline burned into Esha's recognition, her face more memorable than her mask had ever been. Atarangi had promised to guard Clamshell's chick like her own child: that was a promise she spoke like her own personal hymn.</p><p>Rooftop landed on Esha's shoulder, the wind making her flinch but his weight oddly similar to Atarangi's touch. <em>“We will meet you at the top, kin. Blue-grey underground places are not meant for phoenix kind.”</em></p><p>The spiral ramp was already narrow for Rooftop's tastes, barely allowing his wings at full spread; it followed that he didn't want to chance anywhere smaller and neither would Clamshell.</p><p>“Alright,” Esha sighed. “Don't get shot by a guard before I get there.”</p><p>“<em>No, no! I need to help, to keep you safe. Yam-growing is hard: your knowledge is holy green.”</em></p><p>Esha wouldn't be doing much yam cultivating in the summer to come, with the rate black hooves were creeping over her cuticles. But she left Rooftop that comforting illusion.</p><p> </p><p>With Sureness and Nimble for company, and her wheeled chair full of supplies, Esha began. She went where the aide serpents led — past the Abyssal, who watched her pass with dozens of eerily smiling eyes; past the rock tables crowded with flasks and tools and lichen stems; into a tunnel entrance unlit and nearly invisible.</p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> the spokesman said, <em>“this holy path has few lights, that a serpent may feel connection to the earth. Direction: speak few sounds. This human is admitted for a practical purpose, but show no lack of respect.”</em></p><p>“<em>Statement: this one, Sureness of Azure Triad, will ensure it.”</em></p><p>“<em>Statement:“ </em>Nimble said, honest but stumbling,<em> “Nimble will assist.” </em></p><p>That was all: the spokesman fanned wide in agreement. They began the climb, with Nimble leading and Sureness behind, balancing the wheeled chair on his back. As darkness took hold, Esha had only their finlights for company — and her own thoughts, and the anticipation knotting her gut.</p><p>Journeying up to High Plateau would take a week for a noble, lounging in a yak-drawn cart and eating herbed candies. A cannier — or poorer — person would scale the spires. If heaven favoured them, a skilled messenger might traverse the spires from Millworks to High Plateau in fewer days than they had fingers on one hand.</p><p> </p><p>By serpent roads, Esha made the climb in a single day.</p><p> </p><p>It was dark as a moonless night, broken only by blue-glowing algae dotting the ceiling. Water trickled, its echoing consuming the space, its dampness slick underfoot. Esha slipped a few times, skidded on the unforgiving surfaces, until she yanked off her socks and let the goat's hooves make themselves useful. Traction wasn't an issue for a serpent: their bellies gripped with a sound like a village's worth of hands trailed over the stone.</p><p>She took a cold meal, a ball of rice cloyed with herbs; the serpents crunched some sort of dried pondweed cake. They kept on. The algaes spread to cover the ceiling in luminous mats, nearly bright enough to drown out Nimble's finlights.</p><p>“<em>Statement: we approach the Stillwaters.”</em> Sureness clicked hardly louder than the echoing water. <em>“Advisory: Precious One, you will look upon the transcended forms of many serpents from time past. Touch nothing without permit.”</em></p><p>“Alright,” Esha said. “Are they anything like the Abyssal?”</p><p>Sureness paused, chewing over the question. Esha's things clicked as he rounded an especially steep step.</p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> Nimble replied, <em>“transcended serpents are somewhat like the Abyssal! They are finlight-luminous. Additionally: they are wise.”</em></p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> Sureness decided, <em>“transcended ones are not so large. Enough discussion. Request: silence.”</em></p><p>The climbing went on, more setting of hooves and heaving up onto them, trying not to stumble and land on Nimble's tail fin. The algaes spilled down the walls now, bright as a blue dawn, and after a final great step upward they were on a plateau. A plateau that was the mouth of a cave, filled with halcyon water and shining with the light of a mushroom forest.</p><p>“These are—“ Esha breathed. “<em>These</em> are serpents?”</p><p>“<em>Correction:“</em> came Sureness's soft clicking, <em>“these ones <span class="u">were</span> serpents.”</em></p><p>She walked toward a mushroom, mouth agape and her hands clutching one another to keep out of trouble. Its curving stem and wide-fluted cap — which jutted toward Esha, chest-high on her, looked more like glazed statuary than any fungus she had ever seen.</p><p>At the water's edge, Nimble clacked a greeting — to the serpent swimming toward them. She straightened tall as she left the water and Esha couldn't catch her gasp before it left her mouth: this serpent glowed bright because her head fins weren't tendrils at all, but bulbous strings of luminous mushrooms. Her eyes glowed, too, as pale as sky.</p><p>Sureness spoke to her immediately. He gestured with fins and braided barbels came rapid; the old serpent listened, squinting mild.</p><p>“<em>Request:“</em> Sureness clicked, <em>“given the situation, this human, Precious One, must be given all possible accommodations. Elaboration: Precious One can only comprehend toothtap. Request: speak in basic forms, and forgive her returning in kind.”</em></p><p>“<em>Affirmative,”</em> the old serpent said. Then, turning her unearthly gaze to Esha, she circled her barbels. The sight settled wrong in Esha's gut and, hoping to dislodge it, she gestured namaste. The two movements were nearly the same, said the lungta's hazy grasping: the old serpent clicked delighted.</p><p>“<em>Salutation:“</em> she said, <em>“I know your vibration! Be at peace here, guest. I am named Fathoming. Query: what accommodation does this one require?”</em></p><p>Under that glowing gaze, the plan stuck in Esha's throat.</p><p>“<em>Request:“</em> Sureness clicked, <em>“this triad-of-circumstance must travel to the highest altitude possible. But being human, Precious One cannot breathe water, not even one breath. Query: can you spare some lungta toward the task, mentor?”</em></p><p>“<em>Revelation: what a pulse this is! Assurance: this one will assist.”</em></p><p>Turning back to the water, Fathoming hunched and touched barbels to the stone. With an earthshifting tremor, she summoned stone in a current like pouring molasses, a path that stretched over the water. She slithered onto it, pushing the path farther and farther onto the blue-limned water.</p><p>Earthshifting was still a miraculous art, no matter how many times it was performed before Esha's eyes. Nimble and Sureness followed Fathoming. On hesitating feet, Esha took one step and found the path solid as any other masonwork. So, she followed.</p><p>“<em>Delight,”</em> Fathoming clicked up ahead. <em>“A not-serpent with a reverent heart, fit to see the Stillwaters! This one hoped to see it while I still have eyes. Statement: eyes are only one sense, however. Suggestion: compassionate barbels will hear these transcended ones humming the secrets of life.”</em></p><p>Looking around at the crowds of mushroom caps and lichen boughs, Esha could nearly believe it. “I don't have barbels, though ...”</p><p>Sureness jerked to a halt, so Esha stumbled to avoid his backside barbels: at the front of their procession, Fathoming stood tall on her coiled self, craning back at Esha.</p><p>“<em>Query: the filaments behind that one's head-nodes and horns — are those not barbels?”</em></p><p>“No,” Esha stammered. “No, they're hair. They're ... yaah.” She had never even considered how to explain hair to a fish. “They're ... limp things. They sense a little but only when something directly touches them.”</p><p>“<em>Truly?!”</em> Nimble stood and craned, too. <em>“So many filaments! They have such limited use?”</em></p><p>“Yes, they do. Ask the gods why, because I don't know.”</p><p>Fathoming slithered closer. She raised a barbel to touch something Esha couldn't feel and assumed to be a single wafting hair, and she scraped teeth, astonished. <em>“Statement: the elders said this one would learn something soon! I was correct not to question them.”</em></p><p>After winding around corners and through mushroom-caked passages, the water deepened black and Fathoming's path reached a wall.</p><p>“<em>Assurance: this one will forge a new path. Have patience.”</em></p><p>Fathoming slipped into the water with one consuming splash, and swam mercurial into the depths.</p><p>They waited. Nimble slipped into the water, too, and swam circles to inspect every mushroom. Time dragged on; Esha's knees were free of pain and she had nearly forgotten what that felt like, but the tension of it all chewed harder at her.</p><p>She sat down. After another eternity, Sureness set the wheeled chair aside and coiled comfortable. Waves lapped against the cave walls in time with Nimble's tail. Mushrooms bobbed as the waves touched them — hundreds of mushrooms at the waterline alone, Esha guessed. Thousands upon thousands in the entire cave. After moments spent trying to count, Esha rested on the thought that untold serpent lives came to rest in this peaceful catacomb, with Fathomless watching over them. It sounded like a fortunate end.</p><p>It grew harder to think as rumbling stirred a familiar panic in Esha. She watched the wall past Sureness's light-tipped fins. Tremors gathered, earthshifting focused — and the rock melted away in the wrong place, metres to the right of the path.</p><p>Fathomless snaked her head out. <em>“Happenstance ... Query: is this located near enough?”</em></p><p>“<em>Assurance: it appears serviceable!”</em> Nimble swam over, the rush of his tail rattling off the walls.</p><p>Esha's breath caught as she looked down into the water. The bottom wavered indistinct, looking temptingly near but Esha had witnessed Fathomless winding down and down. “I— I've never swam in this much water before ...”</p><p>“<em>Assurance:“</em> Sureness said, <em>“terrestrial paths are best suited to that one's needs.”</em> And without another tapped tooth, he put barbels to the path and pushed its stone perpendicular along the wall, to meet Fathomless's opening. With Esha's chair replaced on his back, Sureness continued on — and tapped Nimble's nose with a barbel as he passed.</p><p>Esha wanted to laugh, at the way Nimble scrunched his face and flailed, splashing. The laugh couldn't leave her throat, though. She was remembering the goal again, and feeling the weight of her patched-together plan.</p><p>Fathomless had opened a worm's path through solid rock, a dark, stifling corridor that grew darker as Sureness's breadth blocked it. They crept through, and ended up in an open cavern the size of a mid-caste's house. Metal mesh held soil but not enough to block every mote of light: the cavern was suffused with daylight faded as if by time. Water trickled down one wall, feeding a pool full of leafy weeds. Esha wondered if Fathomless lived here, or if she was as eternal and unsleeping as the mushrooms.</p><p>“Affirmative. We stand now at the edge of serpent territory.” Fathoming cocked fins. “Hypothesis: this is a holy place for humans, as well. Query: that is correct, Precious One?”</p><p>“It's ... it's a revered place, you might say,” she managed.</p><p>Taking his considering gaze off the ceiling mesh, Sureness eyed Esha. <em>“Query: Nimble, are you prepared? Precious One, you as well?”</em></p><p>“I ...” She couldn't possibly answer that. The glare on mountaintop snow, washed pink and blue and silver with lungta was more than Esha was prepared for.</p><p>“<em>Reminder: the phoenixes must be signalled! Addition: consuming more lungta would be prudent!”</em></p><p>“He's right,” Esha said with the weight of relief.</p><p>After the serpents earthshifted a small shaft to the surface, Esha gave them her broken khukuri blade to lay on the ground. It would be innocuous not to draw guards, but reflective enough to catch a bird's eye — and Rooftop would recognize the blade Esha had used around all of their evening fires.</p><p>Esha's meal was her last gob of rice wrapped in a chapatti stale as dust, topped with enough crumbled lungta herbs to nearly hide the taste. Such scraps wouldn't let Esha speak with the choral lungta of a diplomat, but she might at least sound like she belonged on High Plateau. The millet meal, rice and herb might shore up her body long enough to carve some kind of mark onto the world.</p><p>They finished eating, and waited. Then a croaking rang down the shaft:</p><p>“<em>Precious One? Deep-hiding?”</em></p><p>“I'm here, Rooftop! Wait for me to come up.”</p><p>“<em>Am your kin!”</em></p><p>She put on her disguise. Cloak, headwraps, cowl, socks, footwraps and a checker-textured woven mask: everything layered over the clothes she was wearing, and Esha tugged and settled the assortment until it felt unremarkable. Stifling her horns and goat ears again was an old familiarity, one that didn't easily move.</p><p>“Alright,” she told Sureness. “We can go. Ah, Fathomless? Gratitude: thank you.”</p><p>It was a redundant thing to say and Esha only noticed as she spoke it. Still, Fathomless gave a bright smile of fins. <em>“Assurance: this one wasn't troubled by the concession. Depths guard you.”</em></p><p>Heavens, depths — Esha didn't care what guarded her. She simply climbed the laddered ledges Nimble has earthshifted into the shaft's side. As long as something remembered that Esha Of The Fields existed, and granted her a pinch of luck this day, she would be content.</p><p>The shaft led up into freezing air, windy enough to push under the edges of Esha's clothes. She emerged into a stand of bamboo, a tall and pristine one unmolested by fuelcutters and probably tended by a groundskeeper in addition to a ranger. Rooftop and Clamshell perched in the thickest bamboo leaves: both creaked greeting. The cold was invigorating and Esha's kin were here, and her nerves drifted away like snowflakes.</p><p>“Stay here,” Esha told Sureness. She knelt beside the climbing shaft, looking down at his fin-framed face, knowing what chaos would take hold if such a massive serpent were sighted on High Plateau. “Be ready for temperature-sensitive lungta plants. And don't give away any Deepling secrets for my sake.”</p><p>“<em>This one pledges it,”</em> Sureness clicked.</p><p>With a squirming of dappled serpent colours, Nimble took Sureness's place. Small as he was, he would be an easier presence to hide — and he had shown cleverness in evading human sight, besides.</p><p>“Alright, Nimble. You recall that kilometre measurement I told you about?”</p><p>He clicked affirmative, eyes alight.</p><p>“The Kanakisipt home is— how far, kin?”</p><p>Rooftop creaked considering in his throat. <em>“One and one-half kilometres, north direction.”</em></p><p>“It's one and one-half kilometres, that way.”</p><p>Staring at Esha's pointing finger, Nimble clacked agreement. <em>“Determination! This one will wait for the signal and be prepared for surface access!”</em></p><p>Surface access — what an appealing way to refer to it. Like Nimble was simply opening a hatch underground and finding himself in a noble's backyard.</p><p>“Good. Well, then close this shaft over — unless you want a ranger stepping on your nose. Clamshell?”</p><p>Esha stood, and held open her cloak. It was time to, in a manner of speaking, go home.</p><p>Clamshell resented being under the cloak, resented it with tight-pinned crests and a peevish gripping of her own stringfeathers. But she was intelligent enough to keep her grumbling within her head. She made fine stuffing, filling out the cloak like a meatier woman was inside — not someone named Esha Of The Fields, not at all.</p><p>Esha kept her arms loose, her stride steady, her gaze aimed down through the mask holes as she walked the High Plateau streets. Lungta flurried down steady, gone immediately into the glazed tile streets. Embroidered masterpieces passed by on pant legs and sari hems; gemstone beads and gold trim glinted; footsteps faltered, silk-socked toes pointing toward Esha before carrying on. They could stare at the poor, shifting wretch if they damned well wished; Esha only needed to avoid guards. Which would hopefully be simple, since it wasn't against the law to walk while looking elderly, not even in this place.</p><p>The Kanakisipt wall rose up ahead. It sang its owners' praises with pink quartz orchids emblazoning each section and orchid leaves topping the wall towers. The orchids were tradition, and Kanakisipt nobles were more interested in tradition than subtlety.</p><p>No one barred Esha. She kept measuring out slow steps and reached the corner of the Kanakisipt wall, following it edgeward. Pink quartz blossoms flashed by on one side, groomed bamboo on the other, and up ahead the wall's back corner crept closer. There would have to be servants' quarters, or a waste chute, or glass windows or <em>something </em>else Esha could use.</p><p>“Hail, citizen.”</p><p>The voice behind her was obsidian-hard; Esha stopped, and measured herself in turning around. The guard's boots were worn but well buffed with grease: she didn't want to raise her sight any higher.</p><p>“Hail,” she said, and offered a hunched namaste. Esha hoped her voice came out convincingly wizened: it wasn't a sound she had ever tried to make before.</p><p>“Your sigil is not visible — you ought to know better, mother. Kindly produce it.”</p><p>Her caste sigil. Realization crashed down on Esha, knowing that her farmwoman's sigil was buried under the cloak — but she certainly couldn't present that. She could have forged a loftier sigil, could have asked the serpents to lend her metal or wood but Esha was less of a human every day and she simply hadn't <em>thought</em>.</p><p>“I ...” She patted her clothing, a feeble mimickry. Clamshell's soft bulk compressed under her palm and she could feel the feathers contracting, furious. “I-I seem to have ... dropped it.”</p><p>The guard's silence hung. Clamshell's claws tightened to fist Esha's shirt.</p><p>“Then present your nameplate, citizen.”</p><p>Already caught, <em>already</em> finished. Esha stood dry-mouthed and hammer-hearted, fisting and unfisted her hands, and the guard repeated himself in a threat-edged voice but Esha drowned him out by snapping, “Clamshell, now!”</p><p>An explosion of feathers and Clamshell was out, shrieking, beating her wings at the guard's rage-bent face and kicking his helmet away. This was Esha's one chance, her one reserve. Now she was fear-strung and near failure and had nothing left but to run.</p><p>Such a bizarre sensation to spring from one hoof-tipped foot to another but Esha took it, she ran until the wind tore tears from her eyes — around one brick-edged corner, then another, into a recessed crevice deep enough to hide her.</p><p>She had never seen gaps like these in manor walls. It might have been a place for soldiers to fortify, from blood-darkened times past. A noble child wouldn't know. Whatever it was, Esha needed to climb in it but there were no metal spires to grasp, no earthshifted ledges meant for her, nothing but a wall of bricks. Bricks with prayers' words carved from their faces. In front of Esha's face was a brick with the <em>heaven</em> character rendered large enough to look like a cliffside fingerledge — crevices that goats climbed on every day of their lives.</p><p>Maybe she should keep running, Esha thought. Maybe she ought not to trust the goat. But her hands were moving, pulling off her socks and wraps and stuffing them down her sari, and she unwound her selfrope and began tucking her stupid, useful hoof edges into the wall's welcoming niches. Stepping up was terrifying, feeling nothing underfoot, but the wall's top edge drew closer.</p><p>Something flashed in the sky. Esha looked up and saw nothing more solid than clouds. Then the flash came again — rufous feathers, from Clamshell wheeling down to sit on the manor wall.</p><p>“<em>Red-white danger! The enemy comes! Why are you here, this place has no escape!”</em></p><p>“I think I can get over this wall,” Esha gasped in shaking voice. She climbed down before she could fall, hooves finding toeholds as natural as rain fell. “My rope might help. Is there something on the other side you could tie the end onto?”</p><p>Her crests spreading surprised, Clamshell turned. Her dark eyes swept the wall behind her, and then she leaned toward Esha, beak open and grasping. She caught the thrown rope and dragged it farther, then reappeared to creak, <em>“Knot tied, tight-tugged.”</em></p><p>It didn't tear loose when Esha tugged. She simply needed to trust her kin. This time with her selfrope to hold, she again slotted her hooves into carvings and climbed.</p><p>She was nearly at the top, just another arm-length and she might throw fingertips over the wall's edge at Clamshell's feet — but footfalls thumped around the property's outer corner. Esha would be caught before she could make it over; her limbs were leaden with effort already.</p><p>Clamshell took wing and dove out of sight. The guard shouted again, more shocked than before and this time spiced with cursing.</p><p>It was a gift Esha took gladly. Fear blazed in her blood as she pulled hand over hand to the top, swung one leg up and levered her own weight up onto the wall. She jumped over — onto planks too smooth and level to be real — and pulled her selfrope after, and dropped into a ball.</p><p>Her own gasping roared loud as death in her ears but she made out the sound of boots on dirt down below. Footsteps scuffed past and away and she still huddled there, still alive and full of racing blood.</p><p>She just needed to catch her breath, Esha told herself. Moments gathered and gradually, gradually, her breathing slowed and her pulse stopped feeling like catastrophe.</p><p>That was when Esha heard voices behind her, echoed across a vast and stony space.</p><p>“All I mean,” said a woman speaking smoothly native Grewian, “is that we won't have time for both. The wheel-cart has to be back there in, ah, a little less than an hour — Nugah needs it, remember?”</p><p>“Yes, yes.” Another female voice, heavy and awkward with a Sherbu accent. “Let me lift it. Let me.”</p><p>They were calm-voiced servants and surely, they hadn't managed to see Esha. She kept still, still as one of the wall bricks except for her incessantly hammering heart, and she listened.</p><p>There was muted movement. The liquid sound of someone sliding into water. Splashing. The Sherbu woman grunting, more splashing and then a rock clunking, rolling, settling onto a cart. More splashing and talking in colleague voices, and the cart wheels blessedly clacked away. Door hinges faintly similar to a phoenix's voice.</p><p>The wheels stopped short — and booted feet clunked muffled, as soldiers hurried, somewhere in the building's depths. The servants wondered in half whispers and through Esha's thundering heartbeat, their sounds faded into the Kanakisipt mansion.</p><p>It was safe, but Esha still shook as she straightened and looked at her surroundings. The algae pond was the same masterpiece as she remembered: a round pool edged with intricately carved blue slate, dark as night next to the light dazzling off the pool's surface. A dark streak marked the white tiles — where the servants had dragged a heating stone out of the water, to bring back to wherever it was they warmed stones to algae-nurturing temperature. Esha didn't know which coal stoves were large enough for that; her family had never thought it important for her to know the servants' ways.</p><p>The platform Esha laid on was made of rough-hewn pine wood, a utility space no one but mansion staff would ever use. Its railing was supported by nailed boards no wider than Esha's arm. One sideways glance from the servants and Esha would have been discovered. This was a blessing: she had to keep moving.</p><p>As she placed her shaking legs on one descending stair, then another, Clamshell swooped back to alight on the wall's edge.</p><p>“<em>The house-enemies, they search for you. Too stupid to catch me, though.”</em></p><p>“Mm. People are coming back here, to this open space,” Esha murmured. “Stay out of sight. Rooftop, too.”</p><p>With a muttered agreement, Clamshell winged out of sight.</p><p>No time for quivering nerves. Time only for calling her allies. Esha hurried to the algae pond and sank to her knees — still marvelling at their new vigor — to thrust her faithful broken khukuri blade into the water. Strike it against anything, Nimble had told her, but best to choose something that vibrated.</p><p>The heating rock installations looked right. Esha hit her blade's flat against the steel bars and felt trembling dissipate into the earth. She waited and struck again. Impatience grew no grain, but they didn't have long to waste.</p><p>Esha kept striking, <em>clang clang clang</em> to call downward. Vibrations faded again — and then, from a trembling in the earth, came back to answer Esha.</p><p>She was shaking her arm dry and getting to her feet when Nimble came. Stone shifted at the bottom of the algae pool and his frilled head emerged — while the water level of the pool slid steadily downward. He squirmed, and soon spires of rock rose to break the water, spires that spread into rough-hewn walls of a kind of deepearth chimney. The remaining water was preserved. Nimble emerged from the top, grinning even while he flinched at the daybright.</p><p>“<em>Astonishment! This one didn't expect such architecture! Query: Is this construction solely for housing valuable lungta plants?”</em></p><p>“You might say that. Stay out of sight, Nimble — there are guards are searching for us, the kind of humans who use weapons. We'll come back with the orchids — just be ready to earthshift that hole closed behind me.”</p><p>
  <em>“Query: may this one take a ( )-floating algae?”</em>
</p><p>“Yaah, if you want to? As long as you're not caught.”</p><p>Nimble was chittering a reply, and Esha was resettling her footwraps around her furred ankles. Then a trembling came — familiar for a few heartbeats.</p><p>“Nimble? Is that your—“</p><p>The earth roared then, and lurched under her with a screaming of stone and structures.</p><p>“No, not now,” she hissed, “not now!”</p><p>But the Abyssal couldn't be stopped and the earthquake jerked Esha's balance away, so she tottered on the goat's sure little feet. The Abyssal's energies shot through the slate floor, ripping through it like wrenched paper while the walls broke apart. Esha dropped, gripped the ground with spread hands, and prayed she wouldn't die while thieving.</p><p>When it was over, the dust hung and slowly settled, with glints of lungta among it. The Kanakisipt home still stood but it was cracked across every expensive wall. Smoke rose from the home; shouting rang from the far side.</p><p>Esha gasped oaths, gasped them like lifelines. She hadn't imagined this of her former home and wasn't sure if she should have, if her mind would ever draw such a sight.</p><p>“<em>Precious One,”</em> Clamshell snapped, wheeling back down from the sky, <em>“house-enemies are white-running again. We must go — north by stone, the purple-song-flower is this way.”</em></p><p>“One moment — Nimble? Nimble, are you alright?”</p><p>His underground shaft still stood, a spire in the middle of the pool. But Nimble wasn't inside: Esha couldn't find him until she looked closer at the algaes. Nimble drifted in the water in a tight-wound ball, nose and tendrils barely breaking the water's surface.</p><p>“<em>Statement:“</em> he chattered meek, <em>“This one is unharmed.”</em></p><p>“Stay there,” Esha said. No one should come here: this isn't the most important place to protect.”</p><p>“<em>Statement: this one should stay here, regardless. If a serpent attempts to earthshift a path and is overwhelmed by an after-quake, that serpent is crushed.”</em></p><p>“Oh, <em>gods</em>.” It was a real worry, and an awful fate to imagine. “No, don't get crushed. I'll come back with the orchids. Be ready to escape.”</p><p>He flicked affirmative fins, and kept floating like a mere decoration.</p><p>“Clamshell? Now I really don't know what I'm doing.”</p><p>“<em>No one knows,”</em> she croaked. <em>“Just go. Search. Rooftop is orange-distracting the house-enemies; I am his kin.”</em></p><p>Esha nearly followed her remembered paths through the house. But those were nobles' paths, she remembered with a jolt. She might encounter guards — or someone she knew. Death would be sweeter.</p><p>That was a sharp spur pushing her to movement, to run along the outside wall of the home, to raise a sleeve to her mouth against the still-thick dust and stumble over the broken decorative bricks now in shambles.</p><p>She knew loosely where the orchid hothouse was. Leftward from the algae pond, through a pattern of halls. She kept stumbling, through rubble and through passageway cracks in walls.</p><p>The hothouse was the most important part of the home, people had told her, people with family's titles and warm-seeming hands. The hothouse was their greatest treasure, the source of their wealth and the reason they could afford so many negotiation efforts. Here on Tselaya's ever-winter crown peak, with lungta winging around them like glittering birds, the Kanakisipts were noble and true.</p><p>Esha didn't remember the precise words of it: she had been small at the time, held high against someone's chest so she could see. She remembered a haze of warmth and moisture, billowing like a curtain against her face as they entered. She remembered serving caste hurrying around doing important-looking things, and scuttling out of the way when the Kanakisipts entered. At some point, Esha Kanakisipt had touched an orchid, touched the delicate blossom with the most careful of touches, held a sheening green leaf between her small hands and watched how light danced on it.</p><p>It was the most important part of Kanakisipt. Even in this confusion, Esha's gut relished the thought of touching those orchids again — and getting her farm-dirt fingerprints all over them.</p><p>She clambered over a ruined wall, placing her hands careful on jagged faces of stone, snagging her pants and jolting against it until she found the restraint and yanked it loose. She coughed against the dust — and saw guards' helmets moving beyond the ruins so she dropped low and breathed into her sleeve, heart pounding.</p><p>“Over here,” one guard was shouting, “he's over here! Hurry!”</p><p>Footsteps receded again. Esha was an insect amid all this panic: she only needed to stay unnoticed. She peeked over the wall, saw no imperial red, and hurried her pulse-pounding limbs to movement again. The ruins included broken glass now, denser and denser blankets of it.</p><p>Above her, Clamshell wheeled, a bright orange pinpoint against the smoke-streaked sky. She was circling over a spot that felt familiar — the hothouse, Esha felt the glowing remnants of her memory map and knew it to be true. She hurried, around an intact wall, to a place of tilted wooden beams.</p><p>This alone was a stunning tragedy. A wooden beam older than Esha, more precious than salt and gold because it was made of lungta-steeped applewood, laid splintered apart like a common maize stalk. Destroyed in the blink of an eye. Esha was stunned for a few heartbeats — but she wasn't the one who would have to pay for it. And she couldn't carry it, and applewood was lungta-rich but impossible to chew. She ducked under it and kept on.</p><p>Around the corner was the hothouse — or it should have been there, but there was only a field of shattered glass spread like cobblestone. Pots stood against the larger pieces of jagged glass. Orchids bent under the weight, and the steam-warm air was pierced by every gust of wind.</p><p>One servant was there already, lifting a wooden beam. He looked sharp to Esha. Their eyes locked and the moment was set in stone.</p><p>“Oh,” Esha said, grasping for the words buried deep inside her. Nobles' attendants never did swear; nobles' attendants were not permitted to curse the gods aloud. She raised hands to her mouth. “Oh, my! The orchids!”</p><p>“Help me,” the servant called. He was a groundskeeper, judging by his dun-coloured clothing and clay caste sigil. Esha hesitated for only one heartbeat, before she was hurrying across the field of broken glass to put her hands under the broken beam.</p><p>“If this stays touching the heat rocks,” the groundskeeper grunted, “it'll catch fire. The orchids need heat but not like that.”</p><p>“We can lift it,” Esha said. It was a strange feeling to lend her hands while searching for things to snatch — but not a bad feeling. It salved the panic well enough.</p><p>“When I say lift,” the servant said. He watched her wide-eyed; his Grewier face was pale and streaked with soot. “Ready ... lift!”</p><p>Esha was lifting, both of them were, and the twisted beam lifted off the heat rock with an acrid gust of smoke. They shoved and dragged, and found a direction the wreckage would move. The beam thumped to the ground, barely missing Esha's wrapped excuse for toes.</p><p>“Whew,” she said. “We need to protect the orchids sprouts, though — won't they freeze in the wind?”</p><p>More voices called out in the distant house; the groundskeeper drifted for a moment, hooked by the sound, then locked his skeweringly honest eyes with Esha again. “Yes — we need to cover them. Use anything, anything at all.”</p><p>For the next few minutes, the two of them worked moving plants. Gathering the clay pots into their arms like the precious burdens they were, and hurrying to the heat rock corner. The singed ceiling beam made a partial wall against wind and cold. The groundskeeper left at one point, leaving Esha hefting pots alone and her mind screaming at her to just flee; a fire-bright phoenix passed overhead like a warning.</p><p>“Kin,” Esha cried, a half-strangled shout. She waved Rooftop closer and he came to land on a crumbling wall edge.</p><p>“<em>Precious One, you should be running. Seize greens and fly!”</em></p><p>“No, not yet — I'm acting like I belong here and it's working! Just take some herb while he's gone — hurry! There's small pots over there.”</p><p>His crests lifting with surprise, Rooftop understood in that moment. He leaped to his wings and glided across the glass-glittering ruins, to a wooden table buckling under ceiling weight but still supporting meal-bowl-sized clay pots with seedlings inside.</p><p>Esha didn't know how many of them were orchids. The Kanakisipt home had no shortage of herbs and spices and expensive treats. But Rooftop didn't bother folding his wings, simply walked mincing over glass shards and picked a pot to sink his beak and claws into.</p><p>Esha turned back to the orchid pot she was moving, just for a moment. The plant was already curling at its delicate edges, shrivelling at the air's cooling touch. She was setting that one pot down in the heat rock's radiant aura when someone shouted, <em>“Phoenix!”</em></p><p>The groundskeeper had returned, arms full of canvas — which he dropped as he charged at Rooftop. “Yaah! <em>Yaah!</em> Get away!”</p><p>With a strangled squawk, beak full of stalks and feet locked awkward around the pot's edge, Rooftop flapped laborious. He lifted past the groundskeeper's reach, away and over the broken walls.</p><p>They were caught. But they weren't yet, Esha knew as the groundskeeper looked at her; her lies had worked so far and Rooftop was surely huffing his fright but unhurt.</p><p>“It— It was right behind me. Oh, Rama preserve us,” she claimed.</p><p>“There are thieves about,” the groundskeeper growled. He glowered at the sky but knew he could never overtake a fleeing bird, so he gathered his canvas findings: they looked like curtains from a shack like Esha's. “Stay alert. Here, we can cover the orchids with these.”</p><p>Esha took the corner he thrust into her hands. It took some adjusting and experimenting, stretching the fabric and pinning it down with brick hunks, but they made a tent for the delicate flowers.</p><p>“There,” Esha said, “that was a good idea. This'll keep them warm and ward off thieves.”</p><p>With a sigh, and two fingers dug under his headwrap to scratch whatever traits hid there, the groundskeeper nodded. “The plants won't all fit, though.”</p><p>“Let me move some,” Esha said. She nearly grinned at her own idea, meshed so well into the plan. “I work in the kitchens. We've got warm space beside the ovens.”</p><p>“Ah, I was wondering why we'd never met.” The groundskeeper smiled wan. “That's another good plan, sister. Do you need help lifting them?”</p><p>“No,” Esha lied, “I'll just make trips. Someone needs to stay here, in case that phoenix should come back.”</p><p>He was nodding as Esha bolted across the room, lifting her knees high over broken beams. She had been working at this for more moments than she could say: the groundskeeper didn't deserve this but her friends depended on her return.</p><p>The smaller pots held seedlings and cuttings, new growth that usually got one gardener's entire amount of attention. But here was Kanakisipt's new generation, open for Esha's taking: she only had to choose what she could carry. Esha took a sprouting tube of peony seedlings under her arm, and four pots full of orchid blooms that she balanced against one another, and she hurried for the sagging door.</p><p>“Be careful,” the groundskeeper called after her.</p><p>The guilt returned, a stabbing sense of how dishonourable Esha was. But this fellow low-caste would be found standing over some of the house's orchids, guarding what he could. It would have to do.</p><p>“You be careful, too,” she said, and ran before any more words could catch her.</p><p>There were more soldiers in the ruined halls. A group came around a corner, matched all in their dust-caked armour: their gazes landed arrow-sharp on Esha and her armfuls of precious plants.</p><p>“The hothouse!” she blurted. “The glass is all smashed and there's a phoenix trying to steal from it. We need help!”</p><p>Their stares changed tone immediately. The lead soldier barked to the others and two soldiers broke away from the group, hurrying away on clunking boots. Esha kept on; no one stopped her.</p><p>Rounding a hallway corner and leaving the building, coming out into the algae pond terrace she remembered the location of now, Esha was filled weak and glorious with disbelief. The lies had worked, and she was more shameful than ever but the serpents would have orchids.</p><p>Nimble watched over the edge of his escape shaft. <em>“Revelation: Precious One!”</em></p><p>“Get these underground,” she called, pushing her fading legs for more and faster strides. “They need to be warm — it's too draughty here.”</p><p>Slithering halfway over the edge, Nimble reached all his barbels out toward her, to loop around each and every pot.</p><p>“Where is Rooftop?”</p><p>“<em>Statement: gone by wings.”</em></p><p>“And Clamshell?”</p><p>“<em>Statement: same.”</em></p><p>“Good,” Esha wheezed, “good.”</p><p>Each breath ripped at her insides now; she folded to lean on her knees. As Nimble's nervous, staccato chattering came back up the shaft, she added, “I can't— I can't run any farther, Nimble.”</p><p>“<em>Oblivion, oblivion — no, only challenge! Statement: hold fast, Precious One.”</em></p><p>She watched earthshifting spread rock in front of her, over the water to make a bridge, another path to follow. Esha stepped toward it and remembered nothing after that, except barbels winding around her to take her weight.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Chapter 24</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sureness carried her in a hammock of strong barbels, back through Fathomless's domain and down winding tunnels. Nimble followed, carrying clay pots that jostled like dull-toned bells. Time meant nothing; Esha wanted to sleep but fear still had hooks in her — unless something else was hurting her guts. Hunger, maybe. Grief.</p><p>The hooks only dug deeper when they reached the Community common districts and Bravery was there, holding a metal leaf message.</p><p>“<em>Statement: when the earth shook, Water Light queried how extensive the damage was liable to be on the mountain's surface. This community sustained severe damage: surface constructs are flimsier and presumably fared worse. Water Light stated that she had business to attend to. That one gave a variety of desiccated, lungta-rich plants to the Community, and requested protection for the landholder phoenix's offspring. Update: the human Water Light has not been in contact since.”</em></p><p>“That— That doesn't sound like her,” Esha said.</p><p>The Atarangi she knew would stand among the shaken, and offer her hands, and her words. Maybe arrive just when Esha's thoughts summoned her, or when Rooftop voiced his panic. Something must have drawn Atarangi away; Esha knew what had that kind of power but she couldn't grasp the concept in this moment, through all the noise and motion and her guts' throbbing. She only knew that Atarangi was gone.</p><p>Sureness ground his teeth dismayed. <em>“Assurance: this one would welcome Water Light's presence. Contradiction: we Deeplings cannot wait. Our Abyssal suffers.”</em></p><p>“<em>The Abyssal has never shook so badly before,”</em> Nimble was chittering. <em>“Statement: never before! They must be suffering.”</em></p><p>“Nimble,” Esha mumbled, “get those orchids to— to someone.”</p><p><em>“Admonishment:“</em> Sureness replied, his clicking vibrating through his barbels and his powerful chest, <em>“this one must rest. Precious One may be honoured with a request for further strength.”</em></p><p>Whatever that meant, it weighed Esha's mind further. She only laid there, listening to serpent teeth and the distant hum of shifting earth.</p><p> </p><p>She walked hunched into the Abyssal's chamber some hours later, head throbbing but surely not as badly as the Abyssal's. Sureness and Nimble wound by her sides. All of them needed to show further honour by assisting with the operation: Esha was sure she wasn't translation that word correctly, or specifically enough, but the spokesman serpent had stopped scrutinizing her with every gaze and she had no will to ask further questions with.</p><p>Another dozen of serpents slithering ahead, like a blue-dappled river with stars winking in it. The chamber was still large as sky, full of the Abyssal's patterns of finlights. They moved in steady flux: the Abyssal laid still but its lung fronds still laboured at the air.</p><p>The entering serpents took their places on evenly spaced moss beds; some slithered confident to a place they remembered, others moved slowly, choosing, discussing. Sureness guided Esha with a ropy tug on her arm.</p><p>“<em>Statement: that one did well to provide medicinal petals for this operation. Directive: assist the physicians by aiding their chewing, Precious One, and you will further afix good faith to serpent/human relations.”</em></p><p>“<em>Assurance,” </em>Nimble clicked eager,<em> “Truth will be written long-form about Precious One. Additional possibility: once you prepare herb for physicians, there may also be a poem.” </em></p><p>Her presence was the building of something, a foundation for the future. Her name would spoken kindly in years to come — as a memorable <em>poem,</em> no less. That thought was enough to bolster Esha and wind her hands tight around her pestle.</p><p>They were given glass bottles of water, and instructed to pour it over their barbels. Since humans didn't have barbels, the venturers decided, Esha's hands would suit the purpose. She washed, trying to place the pungent scent of the water: it was laced with something that wasn't vinegar but smelled like a close cousin.</p><p>Everyone in the chamber washed clean and returned their bottles, which disappeared with a symphony of clicking and clattering in the dark.</p><p>Then a summoning toothtap rang out through the chamber. The spokesman serpent stood tall on his coils, fins and barbels spread wide — and it surprised Esha with toothtap she could understand.</p><p>“<em>Greeting: welcome is bidden to all present. We extend gratitude for your presence this day, and for the gift of your strength.”</em></p><p>Rustling rose in the crowd, a wave of questioning frillsign.</p><p>“<em>Apology: this speech of mine is crude. Basis: One of our herb-workers is Precious One of Human Triad. With that one's assistance, we deeplings acquired surface botanicals containing powerful lungta. Ergo: for Precious One's ease of understanding, we make this request. Speak toothtap whenever possible for the duration of this operation.”</em></p><p>Esha couldn't remember the last time she had been so relieved — or so honoured.</p><p>“<em>Addition:“</em> Sureness clacked loud, “t<em>wo phoenixes aided the acquisition of those botanicals. Ceiling of Human Triad, and also the landholder phoenix, Clamshell — a delinquent in the past, now redeemed to us. Statement: the phoenixes' worthiness must not be forgotten. Caveat: they only lack the physical strength to prepare physicians' herb.”</em></p><p>The spokesman tucked his fins humble. <em>“Statement: let record and memory show this amendment. Now, we begin.”</em></p><p>Serpents came along the rows with silver platters of herbs. Esha was given something scaly and richly purple, no doubt more valuable than all the yams she had planted in her lifetime.</p><p>“<em>Query:“</em> Sureness asked her, <em>“that one's lower-legs are troublesome, but your upper-legs are strong?”</em></p><p>“I think so. I've dug fields with these hands for more than thirty years.”</p><p>Sureness paused. <em>“Statement: that one looks ideal for this task. Long limbs, adequate muscle mass ... This one holds confidence.”</em></p><p><em>“Affirmative!”</em> Nimble clicked. <em>“Statement: Precious One cuts bamboo into ( ) units using primitive tools. That one is considerably robust!”</em></p><p>Tired though she already was, Esha smiled.</p><p>It was a slow beginning. Someone passing by dropped the vividly purple lichen into Esha's mortar; Sureness advised her to wait. Physician serpents stood gathered near the Abyssal, braiding and unbraiding barbels in a movement too steady to be called fidgeting.</p><p>She watched aides milling around the Abyssal's enormity. They applied salves, and spoke nurses' words, and tucked things into the Abyssal's compliant mouth. One serpent looked especially intent, holding barbels to the Abyssal's face right below a glassy eye, bent with concentration.</p><p>Esha rubbed at her neck. The headache was crawling downward.</p><p>Suddenly, the intent serpent looked up. <em>“Command: ( )-sleep has begun. Commence operating.”</em></p><p>And the physicians all burst to action, taking pulped herb from a stone table, swallowing and darting quick as falling rain to the Abyssal's head. Some held glinting tools in their barbels; some didn't; all of them were suffused with light like their finlights were spreading, and that light leaked into the Abyssal with every flesh-parting touch. A muted lungta sound filled the chamber, like the lull in a forest's wind.</p><p>It was nearly like a physician operating, although there was no blood that Esha could see. Her stomach flipped anyway and she focused on grinding.</p><p>Attendants circled the rows, bringing herb, taking herb, offering water. Flower-speckled pond weed was dropped into Esha's mortar and taken back once crushed smooth; then tsupira; then something she didn't recognize at all but it was spongy and resilient under her pestle. Esha threw her burning back into the crushing. Sureness and Nimble worked circular beside her. Serpents shook with effort all around.</p><p>She couldn't work fast enough to calm her racing heart. Serpents' bellies hushed against stone and tools scraped against lungta plants while and the surgeons shone with the rattling power of their magic.</p><p>While waiting for a lichen mash to be collected, Esha chanced another look at the procedure. The Abyssal's head was spread open like a cut cabbage but still nothing bled, nothing oozed: the physicians scooped around an outline that must have been a serpent. Like they were checking or cleaning around those many persons stacked together.</p><p>The material Esha had to grind became more resistant, more fibrous. Her heartbeat was thudding in her ears and drinking water only made her stomach roil. Keep going, she told herself. This was important; this was larger than one farmwoman's aches.</p><p>The Abyssal thrashed — one snap of their body length, familiar in a gut-deep way that scared Esha. Surgeons clicked hurriedly and slithered over one another, placing their lungta-lit barbels. The Abyssal shivered, and stilled.</p><p>Time kept moving like sludge. Attendants took mashed plants from Esha and gave her never-ending replacements.</p><p>Something rolled in her wobbling vision. Esha looked up sharp — fearing someone falling, tripping — but it was a dark body supported by several straining surgeons. They were removed a serpent entirely. Whoever they were, they were limp as death, their tendrils hitting the floor like lengths of common rope: aides wrapped the body with pond weed leaves in the plant-grinding silence.</p><p>Esha looked back to her mortar bowl. Stringy mushrooms laid there, needing her muscle effort. The headache roared louder; her neck echoed it.</p><p>She tried to watch the operation but her vision wouldn't move where she aimed it. She wanted to push on her tools, wanted to grind one more batch of physician's herb but the pestle wasn't sturdy enough to lean on.</p><p>The next thing Esha knew, she was slumped on the pestle with her heartbeat rattling; her nose shrieked where she had hit it. Esha tried to place her arms underneath her, tried to rise but barbels gripped her under the arms and picked her up, gathered her up like a child.</p><p>“<em>Query: you are ill?”</em></p><p>It must have been Sureness. Esha needed a moment to be sure, past the swimming of her senses, but the serpent was strong and his toothtap came rapid and worried.</p><p>“I just— I lost my strength all of a sudden. I'm sorry.”</p><p><em>“Statement:“ </em>he clicked to someone else,<em> “Precious One needs assistance. We must forfeit." </em></p><p>The clicking in response was dismayed, and worst of all, not unkind.</p><p>She wondered if she would be cut open like the Abyssal. If there were broken parts or goat-infested pieces those skilled serpents could excise from her. It was a thought that wafted on wind, useless as a house flag shown to no one. In Sureness's grasp, feeling her bones throb, Esha could only watch dark walls passing by and anticipate the goat's arrival.</p>
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<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Chapter 25</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the days that followed, Esha laid on piled moss, with Rooftop's feathered body curled under her arm. Serpent faces drifted over her, their fins pinned back with worry.</p><p>“This is how humans shift— how we transcend,” Esha told Sureness and Nimble one day. She couldn't open her eyes that day: the right one was blurred and trying to see through it made her stomach roil even worse. She laid there, face-up in the darkness, and stroked Rooftop's neck. “I'm near the tipping point, I think.”</p><p>“<em>Query: humans transcend into ... other creatures?”</em></p><p>“That's right. Mostly furred beasts. Sometimes birds. I'm going to be a goat, a four-footed meat beast.” She yanked in a breath. “G-Going to eat gumgrass and climb the cliffsides. On these hooves.”</p><p>A barbel laid on her forehead. Maybe Sureness's, maybe one of the kind-clicking nurses, Esha couldn't say. She swallowed, and went on.</p><p>“Humans become ... less complicated animals. When we change. I suppose no one transcends into phoenixes, then — or serpents. I've never thought about it before.”</p><p>“<em>Query: you don't have long?”</em> Nimble chattered. <em>“Dismay! This one wanted to share the eye-sight of more food gardens. And view the great libraries, and the waterfall chronicles. And the orchids! Statement: two orchids were left unused by the Abyssal's procedure. They are wilted from the skylight air, but I believe they will recover.”</em></p><p>“You got my care and growing directions?” Bravery had sat by Esha's side for a day, documenting everything Esha could remember about temperature and air flow and soil aeration. She was no hothouse attendant but she knew a little.</p><p>
  <em>“Affirmative. Engineers have installed light stems—“</em>
</p><p>Which Esha knew as hollowheart bamboo.</p><p>
  <em>“—for the sole use of that flower species. We Deeplings will devote study to it; our physicians will benefit, surely.”</em>
</p><p>Ordinarily, keeping the orchids swathed in moisture was the most difficult part. But in the care of serpents, growing by pools and passages and water seeping down cave walls, that would be less trouble than keeping soil dirty. The Kanakisipt orchids were rooted in a new garden and they didn't just belong to nobles anymore. All serpents within Tselaya mountain would be helped by these few plants. It was a warmth that shone in Esha's chest: she only wished Atarangi could share in it.</p><p>“You found my digging spade, Nimble? In my things?”</p><p>“<em>Query: you wish to hold it?”</em></p><p>“No, no — keep it. It might help you aerate that sesame plant, or ... I don't know, yams or something. Gods damn it, I wanted to show you everything, Nimble.”</p><p><em>“I can teach them to grow yams,”</em> Rooftop creaked soft. <em>“You showed me; I remember.”</em></p><p>“Good. Good.”</p><p>They went ahead and learned to plant yams, while Esha was still present within herself and squinting through one eye, while the remaining yam from her packed things was still viable. Nimble and Sureness planted slices of it in a wheeled basin, under Rooftop's attentive eye. Such a ridiculous sight it was, those enormous serpents bending to pat yams gently into soil beds, their fins spread with concentration. It cheered Esha even as her bad eye settled into a foreign, new sort of ordinary.</p><p>The serpents brought her a glass mirror. Here was the goat eye Esha had been dreading, a stranger's shade of brown with an oblong pupil. The pupil looked wherever she aimed it. The goat eye was well and truly hers. The other eye was beginning to blur, no matter how much she blinked it.</p><p>She wasn't scared anymore; she simply didn't have much time.</p><p>“Thank you,” she told Sureness, giving back the mirror with her hoof-hobbled fingers. And to Nimble, she said, “There must be more I can show you. Have you ever grown lentils?”</p><p>Rooftop was all too glad to help. He left and returned with his stringfeathers laden with morsels, dangling straight down while he flew, and sacks in his claws as well. With him came Clamshell and her chick — who was fledging now, a few siren-bright feathers poking out of his brown motley.</p><p>“<em>Brought leaf-food to the watersnakes,”</em> Clamshell told Esha. <em>“Also red-long-berries.”</em></p><p>Maybe a chile pepper, Esha wondered. “I hope you didn't steal them.”</p><p>She croaked, like scoffing. <em>“Human trade-makers don't orange-speak to phoenixes. You know that.”</em></p><p>“Hey,” Esha told the chick, “you keep your mother honest.”</p><p>In a clear voice like morning, he peeped,<em> “Alright. Maybe.”</em></p><p> </p><p>She laid there for further days, an eon passing within her own skin. Nurses moved her onto new moss and cleaned the piss off her. Each time she turned over on her bedroll she found a new soreness in her joints, a new stiffness as her body refused to move like a human would.</p><p>The headache returned. It crept down her jaw, along her nose, into the roots of her teeth. The goat worked on her bones and next time Esha rose from her bed, it would be onto four feet.</p><p>“Esha? Oh, great tides!”</p><p>Atarangi's voice. And her footfalls on the stone, and her hands warm on Esha's mess of skin and fur.</p><p>“Thought you weren't coming back.”</p><p>“I'm sorry,” Atarangi said. She rubbed one of the goat's ears, a feeling both distressing and blissful. “Oh, dear friend, I didn't mean to take so long.”</p><p>Esha forgave her. She couldn't possibly grudge anymore.</p><p>“The Abyssal's last fit was a powerful one,” Atarangi told her. “Many properties were damaged, homes destroyed ... Many people moved into Empire-granted shelters. It's a terrible thing to see. But a tree that survives the storm will still give fine wood. I bought seven property tokens — most of them like yours, small farmers' homes. It's more steps on my journey, it's more trade goods to bring me up-mountain.”</p><p>After everything, Atarangi still wanted to walk among the humans of Tselaya Mountain. She had an ever-generous heart.</p><p>“Did you ... talk to anyone's animals?”</p><p>“Shh, save your strength.”</p><p>Esha's eyes were closed but behind their lids, she saw Atarangi's thinking smile melting over her wide lips.</p><p>“I mostly translated human troubles, in fact.”</p><p>Esha hummed mild. “I'd like you to do something for me. Call it part of the khukuri deal, if you'd like.”</p><p>Atarangi scoffed low in her throat. “I think we're beyond that, friend.”</p><p>“Just take this down. My confession. About all of it — Gita's end, the traps, stealing the orchids. Everything. You're a diplomat — if you bear witness, it'll be as good as law.”</p><p>She hesitated. “Esha, you don't have to—“</p><p>“No, I <em>do</em>. Someday, someone will cut a hollowheart and they won't run away, they'll look down into the darkness and they'll see a serpent in the middle of watering a damned flower garden. Or a miner will find their tunnels, or <em>something</em>. The serpents can't hide forever. Even if you help them, even if phoenixes help them, they can't hide forever. So ... they can't take the blame for my crimes against the Empire. I need to speak the truth. Even if— Even if I can't speak anymore.”</p><p>For a long moment, Atarangi was silent.</p><p>“Have you got enough paper and ink? I have a lot to confess.”</p><p>She rustled in her supplies. “I'll make it fit.”</p><p> </p><p>In Esha's last days, everything she tried to think about turned slippery. Time escaped her; thoughts were a labour to string together. She found herself thinking more and more about gumgrass, the succulent crunch of the stems.</p><p>Movement slithered and fluttered and walked around her. Esha's friends were gathered — and since they were her friends, they could see her sweat-clumped goat fur, and know her tale of lies and misdeeds and hard work. In the end, Esha found that she didn't mind, not at all.</p>
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<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Chapter 26</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The new diplomat on Rice Plateau was bizarre even for a Manyori, the whispers said. Wore a mask in public. Kept a noble's menagerie of pet phoenixes. Some farmers even said they saw her by the rice paddies at night, kneeling by the water's edge — like she was talking to something in the mud.</p><p>But Atarangi Te Waaka had paid a generous price for a quake-ruined piece of property, everyone said, and she was just as quick with her money when someone had a trapped phoenix to trade — if it was alive. Only if the vermin bird was clearly, thoroughly alive.</p><p> </p><p>Bhuwan considered cobbling some fuel sticks together into a cage. Seemed like a prudent idea, but also like a waste of time. He settled for just tying the phoenix's feet together with twine and tucking the flapping, screaming thing under his arm.</p><p>That was how he walked to the animist's house. Leaning heavy on his walking stick, ignoring the phoenix's sidelong attempts to peck him, hoping for a high enough price to buy some greens for his family's dinner. Maybe new sandals for his youngest. Maybe even a visit to the physician for himself: his quake-crushed leg was healing but so damned <em>slowly</em>. He didn't want to get his hopes strung too high — but this phoenix was worth a few extra rupees, surely.</p><p>There was no mistaking the diplomat Atarangi's home, even before the house flags came into sight. Tagged phoenixes flocked on the shingled roof like crows on a carcass — and with arrow-sharp gaze, one bird spotted him. It opened its wings and took flight, swooping straight at Bhuwan.</p><p>His arms flinched upward but he couldn't drop his captured phoenix, didn't have time to change grip and so he merely hunched and braced for claws tearing at him. None came. No pain and no wing-wind — just a trilling song from in front of him.</p><p>Bhuwan lowered his guard. The phoenix stood there, head tilted, regarding him. It was a handsome animal, as orange as sunset with red streaks lining its crests.</p><p>Suddenly, it jerked its head — an eerily human movement, an echo of someone saying <em>this way. </em>And it walked away.</p><p>Some people said that phoenixes were demon birds, cousins to windsickles. Reasonable people knew that phoenixes were animals — although thieving, nuisance animals.</p><p>Whatever its nature, the phoenix was disappearing around the house's corner. Pushing through his unease, Bhuwan moved his feet, and followed the dragging stringfeathers and the shine of the diplomat's ownership tag.</p><p>The diplomat had purchased a property near the worst-broken edge of Rice, perched fifteen long strides from the precipice. The thought of living near such fresh devastation made most folk nervous. But when Bhuwan first laid eyes on the diplomat, she looked nothing but serene.</p><p>She knelt at the cliff's edge beside a markhor doe — stroking its mane, speaking soundless words to it. She ran her dark-skinned fingers over the goat's fur, and untied the carrot-orange fabric knotted around its neck like a collar. Then she stepped back. And she waited.</p><p>The goat stood there, warily frozen. It turned its spiral-horned head and gazed up at the green-tufted crevices lining the mountain's face. It kept standing there until some urge seized it: it put one hoof in front of the other and left. Left the animist, left to climb the cliffsides as goats naturally did.</p><p>The animist stood there, still as a temple pond, watching the cliffside air where the goat had long since ceased to be. Whoever the goat had been, it was someone precious to Atarangi: Bhuwan didn't need to be told as much.</p><p>“Hail, animist,” he stammered. With arms lopsided around the struggling phoenix, he formed namaste. “I've come at a bad time ... I'm sorry for your loss.”</p><p>She turned — and her face was a horrifying wedge shape, a bird's yellow beak sprawled across her human features. But that wasn't her actual flesh, Bhuwan realized. It was a beak-shaped mask covering the diplomat's nose and cheekbones, its black, bold outlines mimicked by the Manyori tattoos on her chin. Young-looking skin showed around it. She was either cursed with early-onset traits, or as free-spirited as everyone said.</p><p>“Hail,” she told Bhuwan, returning namaste, “and thank you. But this isn't a mourning day. I give thanks because my sister is free now.”</p><p>Bhuwan had felt like that before. He nodded, mute.</p><p>“And I think this friend would like to be free,” she said, looking at the phoenix Bhuwan held like it was some lap pet with an unfortunate case of mange. Atarangi approached, speaking with a rush of lungta like wind through a garden's leaves: “Please, orange-kin, be calm. I will arrange your freedom.”</p><p>Inexplicably, the phoenix's struggling stopped. It became just a warm bundle under Bhuwan's arm.</p><p>“Yaah ... It must like you,” he breathed.</p><p>She didn't answer: she only smiled. There was something peculiar about this woman, some mystery hidden piecemeal under her tongue and in her crinkle-edged eyes.</p><p>“You collect phoenixes,” Bhuwan said, “that is correct? I would like to make a bargain.”</p><p>Atarangi told him, “We can certainly try.”</p>
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